Secondly, a widely applied VAT can be appropriate for covering conventional costs of public goods and services.
This is clearly the case for pure public goods, where exclusion is not possible or desirable and
thus any attempt to have just some agents subject to tourism (specific) taxation
would not be recommendable neither on efficiency nor equity terms.
With respect to consideration of external costs, VAT has the same problem as specific indirect taxes:
imperfect link between the taxed matter and environmental damage,
although its general nature probably exacerbates this short coming