Inverting the chain? VAT collection regimes and tax compliance

Abstract

The Value-Added Tax (VAT) is widely recognized as inherently self-enforcing due to third-party reporting and the spread of withholding across the production chain. However, a growing body of literature documents significant VAT tax gaps, sparking interest in potential improvements to VAT design. One notable example is the Reverse Charge (RC) mechanism, which has recently been adopted by various countries across different industries. RC shifts the entire tax payment responsibility to retailers, who remain subject to third-party reporting. Leveraging administrative firm-level data from Italy and employing a quasi-experimental design, we demonstrate that RC leads to a 20 percent increase in reported value added. The effect of RC is observed across the distribution of firm sizes, though it is more pronounced among small firms and those that previously clustered around the zero-liability tax threshold. For these firms, RC reduces the incentive to under-report sales. Conversely, at the larger end of the firm size distribution, we find that RC limits the over-reporting of purchases, contributing to increased reported value added.

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