【正文】 [16]Clement Car bonnier, Who Pays Sales Tax ? Evidence from French VAT Reforms,19871999[J].Journal of Public Economics,91 (2007). . . . .. . . . .外文翻譯及譯文原文：Is VAT the Best Way to Impose a General Consumption Tax in Developing Countries?Most analysts think that a valueadded tax (VAT) is the best form ofgeneral consumption tax available. If a country needs such a tax as most developing countries certainly do, then VAT is the one to have in almost all cases. Indeed, most such countries already have a VAT, and those that have not yet leaped on the bandwagon are frequently urged to do so. But is the VAT that most developing countries already have as well designed and implemented as possible? Is it as good as it could be in economic, equity, and administrative terms? Must all ‘good’ VATs follow the same pattern? Can every country administer VAT sufficiently well to make the introduction of the tax worthwhile? Is VAT always the best way to respond to the revenue problems caused by trade liberalization in many developing countries? Recently, serious questions have been raised about these and other aspects of VAT, particularly with respect to its role in lowine Our aim in this paper is to discuss some of the recent critical literature on VAT in developing countries. We conclude that while there is merit in many of the criticisms that have been made, and there is certainly still much we do not know about VAT, on the whole VAT still looks good. One must be careful not to let the desire for a level of perfection seldom obtainable in this world to blind one to the considerable merits of VAT as method of imposing a general consumption tax in even the poorest developing countries.Recent studies have questioned the capability of VAT to replace revenues from trade liberalization, especially in lowerine Some countries may want to retain some taxation of international trade simply because of the apparent relative inefficiency of VAT administration pared to the administration of taxes (tariffs) at the border. If VAT can be administered adequately, however, the conventional conclusion that it offers the best way for a country to make up revenue losses from trade liberalization appears generally to hold—though much more convincingly for more developed countries than for the poorer countries in which trade taxes are generally more important and alternative tax bases less accessible. The critical point is that a country must have the capacity to administer VAT adequately. Other things being equal, the average economic cost of collecting revenue is less with VAT simply because the base of VAT is invariably broader than that of the taxes (tariffs, excises or other sales taxes) that it replaces. Even if increasing the rate of an existing VAT will neither necessarily increase revenues proportionately nor be costless, it is nonetheless often the economically most sensible way to expand revenue share in developing and transitional countries. A number of empirical studies have examined the relationship between reliance on VAT and the size of government. In the recent . tax reform discussion, for example, the alleged relationship between VAT and government size was one reason for someopposition to VAT although a recent review of the evidence concludes that VAT is not “a money machine that would finance the expansion of government.”5In a crosscountry analysis, an IMF study in 2001 noted a number of empirical regularities with respect to trade, country size, and government size:Countries without a VAT tend to be small, with the notable exception of the . and India (prior to 2005, when a number of statelevel VATs were introduced。 the 2006 budget speech announced the intention to adopt a central VAT by 2010). Countries that have implemented a VAT have relatively higher per capita GDP levels and rely less on international trade. Both ine and openness (defined as the sum of exports and imports divided by GDP) are positively correlated with the ratio of taxes to GDP. Government consumption and importance of trade are positively correlated, but government consumption as a share of GDP is smaller in larger countries, and small countries tend to be more open to international relatively high ratio of trade to GDP is conducive to VAT revenue performance presumably due to the relative ease of collecting VAT at the point of for which international trade is important tend to have higher tax yields whether or not they operate a VAT. Very small economies may havecharacteristics that facilitate tax enforcement such as social structure and remoteness.A subsequent update of this analysis cautiously concluded that “there is some evidence that the presence of a VAT has been associated with a higher ratio of general government revenue and grants to GDP.”7 This study went on to note that this relationship seems stronger the higher GDP per capita and the lower the share of agriculture in GDP, though the latter relation may simply reflect the mon exclusion of most agricultural activity from VAT. Similarly, the study suggested that although the revenue impact of VAT seems smaller the higher the import ratio this may simply reflect the fact that tariffs (or other taxes) may be equally effective in such countries. On the other hand, all else equal, the more important foreign trade, the more revenue can be collected from an existing VAT. The obvious interpretation, as already mentioned, is that border formalities (and, perhaps, an established customs service) make the collection of VAT on imports relatively easy. Perhaps the most important point emerging from these studies is the extreme variation across countries in the revenue performance of VAT, reflecting a very wide range of factors including differences in tax design, differences in economic environment, and different