This is the tenth edition of Consumption Tax Trends, a biennial OECD publication. It presents cross-country comparative data relative to consumption taxes in OECD member countries, as at 1 January 2014. Tables using data from the National Accounts and data on tax revenue from Revenue Statistics 1965-2013 are updated up to and including 2012. Data on fuel oils taxation tables taken from Energy Prices and Taxes – Quarterly Statistics issued by the International Energy Agency are updated as at 4th Quarter 2013. The country data for the report have, for the most part, been provided by delegates to Working Party No. 9.

Consumption taxes generally consist of general taxes on goods and services (taxes on general consumption), consisting of value-added tax (VAT) and its equivalent in several jurisdictions (goods and services tax, or GST), sales taxes, and other general taxes on goods and services; and taxes on specific goods and services, consisting primarily of excise taxes, customs and import duties, and taxes on specific services (such as insurance premiums and financial services).

This chapter describes the relative importance of consumption taxes as a source of tax revenues and the main features of these taxes. It shows the evolution of consumption tax revenues between 1965 and 2011. It describes the functioning of value added taxes (VAT) and of retail sales taxes (in the United States) and the main characteristics of consumption taxes on specific goods and services. It looks in some more detail at the application of VAT to international trade, more particularly at the challenges of applying VAT to cross-border trade in services and intangibles and at the International VAT/GST Guidelines that the OECD is developing as the future global standard to address these challenges. Finally, it considers the recent developments concerning VAT fraud and evasion and outlines some of the countermeasures that have been implemented in some countries or that may be implemented in the future.

This chapter describes the key features of VAT regimes in OECD countries, i.e. tax rates, exemptions, specific restrictions to input tax credit, registration and collection thresholds, VAT relief arrangements for goods imported by final consumers and special tax collection methods. It is complemented with a technical discussion of the rationale and impact of reduced VAT rates, based on recent OECD research.

This chapter describes how the VAT Revenue Ratio (VRR) provides an indicator of the effect of exemptions, reduced rates and non-compliance on government revenues. It explains how the VRR is calculated and how it should be interpreted. It presents the VRR estimates for OECD countries and provides an analysis of these results. It is complemented with technical notes on the measurement of final consumption expenditure, on the VAT treatment of public sector activities and on the VAT exemption for financial services.

This chapter describes the main features of the excise duties and their impact on revenue, customer behaviour and markets. It explains the respective impact of specific excise and ad valorem taxes and how they interact. It shows the detailed excise tax rates on beer, wine, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and mineral oil products in OECD countries.

This chapter describes the main features of vehicle taxes and their use for influencing customer behaviour over the last decades, in particular within the context of environmental policies. It looks in more detail at the taxes on sale and registration of vehicles and recurrent taxes on use of motor vehicles and their components and provides comparative statistics on the level of these taxes.