"Most VAT systems exclude public bodies from the scope of value added tax (VAT) systems. However, a movement to include public sector bodies within the GST system to some extent or even fully (as in New Zealand) is gaining momentum, and underlies the European Commission's 2011 study on the treatment and economic impact of exemptions in the public interest. Whether the present EU treatment really is as bad as some of its critics suggest, and whether the New Zealand model really is so perfect that jurisdictions with exclusion models ought simply to replace these existing systems with a New Zealand style system: these are the questions which triggered this research and which form the basis for the critical analysis contained in this book."

Conventional wisdom holds that taxing financial services under a transaction-based VAT system entails difficulties that render it impossible to tax the services. This timely work investigates where the difficulties lie. The research is undertaken using benchmarks, including the character of European VAT as an indirect tax on consumption expenditure and the specific features of financial activities. The various key VAT concepts (e.g., taxable person, taxable transactions, taxable amount) are researched in order to establish whether the inclusion of financial activities in the European VAT system entails specific difficulties both from a practical, legal point of view and from a theoretical point of view (in the light of the benchmarks). The work concludes by describing and evaluating alternative treatments to an exemption of financial services such as using both additive and cash-flow methods.