Policy Brief: Consumption Taxes: the Way of the Future?

All governments raise taxes for public spending, from schools to highways and social security. The question is what kind of taxes to levy, how they are applied and how they affect people. Governments have become increasingly interested in recent years in using taxes on consumption, such as sales tax and value added tax (VAT) to finance a larger share of this spending.There are two main reasons for this. Some analysts argue that