2025-05-25-世界银行-增值税豁免_嵌入税和意外后果（英）_33页_1mb

Policy Research Working Paper 11120: VAT Exemptions, Embedded Tax, and Unintended Consequences

Summary

This study analyzes VAT exemptions using an innovative model based on input-output tables for 29 European countries, revealing several key findings:

1. Exemption Effects: VAT exemptions increase production costs by eliminating input tax credits, leading to higher consumer prices and "embedded tax." The direct effect reduces the effective tax rate (ETR) below the standard rate, while indirect effects can increase ETRs and revenue for some commodities.

2. Main Concerns: VAT exemptions are less targeted than reduced rates, cause tax cascading (compounding), create self-supply incentives, harm export competitiveness, and reduce tax revenue with limited policy effectiveness. They also lack transparency due to embedded tax effects.

3. Distributional Impact: Exemptions have mixed distributional effects; while often progressive for necessities like agriculture, they are less transparent and can lead to regressive outcomes due to indirect effects.

4. Policy Recommendations: Exemptions should be strictly limited to addressing pragmatic concerns (e.g., small business burdens or financial services). A hierarchy of reform tools is proposed: target transfers > reduced rates > exemptions when necessary.

Methodology

• A novel iterative model quantifies changes in direct, embedded, and cascaded VAT components.
• 1,305 simulations evaluated the impact of exempting each of 45 commodities across 29 countries.
• Distributional analysis integrates household budget survey data by income quintiles.

Conclusions

Exemptions are inferior to reduced rates due to broader distortions and irreversible indirect effects. Effective tax progressivity and revenue goals should be pursued through direct mechanisms like targeted cash transfers rather than commodity-based tax favors.