Using administrative tax records for UK businesses, we document both bunching in annual turnover below the VAT registration threshold and persistent voluntary registration by almost half of the firms below the threshold. We develop a conceptual framework that can simultaneously explain these two apparently conflicting facts. The framework also predicts that higher intermediate input shares, lower product-market competition and a lower share of business to consumer (B2C) sales lead to voluntary registration. The predictions are exactly the opposite for bunching. We test the theory using linked VAT and corporation tax records from 2004-2014, finding empirical support for these predictions.
Student-friendly and international in scope and relevance, this book provides an accessible introduction to the economics of small business for those with little knowledge of economics. Economics, alongside other disciplines and interacting with them, has some important insights to offer and it is in this context that The Economics of Small Firms examines the formation, survival, growth and financing of small businesses, spatial variations in business formation, the economic role of small businesses, and key policy issues. This informative text is an essential purchase for anybody studying business and management who is eager for an easy-to-use and engaging overview of economics, entrepreneurship and small business.
Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.
A breadth of new digital platforms has dramatically expanded the range of possibilities for exchanging anything required by business or personal needs from accommodation to rides. In the virtual marketplaces shaped and ruled by these novel matchmakers, rather than by a single centralized entity, value is created through the granular interaction of many dispersed individuals. By allowing instantaneous and smooth interaction among millions of individuals, platforms have indeed pushed the digital frontier farther and farther, so as to include within it even services once not capable of direct delivery from a remote location such as accommodation and passenger transport. Legal disruption is also underway with foundational dichotomous categories, such as those between suppliers and customers, business and private spheres, employees and self-employed, no longer viable as organizational legal structures. This is the essential background of the first book to relate what is synthetically captured under the umbrella definition of ‘sharing economy’ to key features at the core of European Value Added Tax (EU VAT) and to look at the feasibility of a reformed EU VAT system capable of addressing the main challenges posed by these new models of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Specifically, the study analyses five legal propositions underpinning the current EU VAT system as the following: taxable persons; taxable transactions; composite supplies; place of supply rules; and liability regimes for collection and remittance of VAT. Exploration of these five legal propositions is meant to assess the practical feasibility of shoehorning the main sharing economy business models – notably, those available in the accommodation and passenger transport sectors – into the framework of existing EU VAT provisions. The author further draws on the normative standards of equality, neutrality, simplicity, flexibility and proportionality to test the ‘reflexes’ of the current EU VAT system in the sharing economy domain. Opportunities for reform of the current EU VAT system are in turn evaluated with each chapter including cogent proposals in the form of incremental and targeted amendments to the current EU VAT provisions. As the first comprehensive analysis of the treatment of the sharing economy for VAT purposes, the book provides not only a theoretical framework for future studies in the tax field but also indispensable practical guidance for VAT specialists confronting daily with the many challenges ushered in by the sharing economy. Moreover, the various solutions and recommendations advanced in the book offer valuable insights to international and national policymakers dealing with similar issues under other VAT systems.
This book brings together thirty years of original empirical research on key aspects of the formation and development of small firms from selected articles authored or co-authored by Peter Johnson. Complete with a comprehensive introduction from the author placing the work in relation to the contemporary debates on the subject and providing a cohes
This paper set forth internationally agreed principles and standards for the value added tax (VAT) treatment of the most common types of international transactions, with a particular focus on trade in services and intangibles. Its aim is to minimise inconsistencies in the application of VAT in a cross-border context with a view to reducing uncertainty and risks of double taxation and unintended non-taxation in international trade. It also includes the recommended principles and mechanisms to address the challenges for the collection of VAT on crossborder sales of digital products that had been identified in the context of the OECD/G20 Project on Base and Erosion and Profit Shifting (the BEPS Project).
This paper presents a novel approach to addressing VAT regressivity, by proposing the adoption of a progressive VAT: a single-rate, broad-base, VAT, whereby tax paid on consumption is re-paid to lower income households in real-time, at the moment of purchase. Such a system can effectively eliminate regressivity, while minimizing the political economy, cash-flow, and welfare stigma obstacles that are often associated with standard welfare transfers used in modern VAT systems. It would also have other significant advantages, particularly in terms of compliance incentives.
