The governments of 86 countries have taken a key step towards preventing VAT/GST from weighing on trade while also safeguarding state revenues by endorsing the first internationally agreed framework for applying national VAT/GST rules to cross-border transactions.
More than 250 high-level representatives of around 100 countries, jurisdictions and international organisations, attending the second meeting of the OECD Global Forum on VAT in Tokyo on 17-18 April, endorsed a new set of OECD Guidelines for the application of VAT or GST to international trade. These International Guidelines seek to address the problems that arise from national VAT systems being applied in an uncoordinated way in the context of international trade. They set standards aimed at ensuring neutrality in cross-border trade and a more coherent taxation of business-to-business (B2B) trade in services.
[LTN 75, 22/4/14]