VALUE-ADDED TAX

government levy on the amount that a business firm adds to the price of a commodity during production and distribution of a good. Three major types of value-added tax have been identified, depending on the deductions allowed, but only onecalled the consumption typeis widely used today. Calculation of the value-added tax of the consumption type can be made in any of three different ways, but virtually every country imposing the tax uses the invoice, or credit, method of computation. Using this method, each seller (the party responsible for collecting the tax and paying it to the government) first calculates the sum of all the taxes that he has collected on goods sold; he then totals the sum of all the taxes that he has paid on goods purchased. His net tax liability is the difference between the tax collected and the tax paid. It is generally assumed that the burden of the value-added tax, like that of other sales taxes, falls upon the final consumer. Although the tax is collected at each stage of the production-distribution chain, the fact that sellers receive a credit for their tax payments causes the tax, in effect, to be passed on to the final consumer, who receives no credit. The tax can be regressive (i.e., the percentage of income paid in tax rises as income falls), but most countries have at least partly avoided this effect by applying a lower rate to necessities than to luxury items. In 1954 France was the first country to adopt the value-added tax on a large scale. It served as an improvement on the earlier turnover tax, by which a product was taxed repeatedly at every stage of production and distribution, without relief for taxes paid at previous stages. Although easier to administer, such a tax discriminated heavily against industries and sectors in which products were bought and sold several times, encouraging an undesirable concentration of economic power. In 1968 West Germany adopted the value-added tax, and since then most other western European nations have followed suit, largely as the result of a desire to harmonize tax systems. All members of the European Union are required to implement value-added taxes that conform to a model prescribed by the union. Many countries in South America, Asia, and Africa have also adopted the tax. The U.S. state of Michigan used a value-added tax from 1953 through 1967 and again from 1975.