Taxes have been with us for as long as civilization, so the VAT at 56 years old is relatively young. Although appealing in terms of revenues raised, the VAT has come to a turning point in its life as countries reflect on the need to raise revenue to deal with the significant increases in public debt caused by recent economic and financial crises.A Brief History of VATGerman businessman Wilhelm Von Siemens is credited with coming up with the idea of a VAT in the 1920s.1 What was only an idea has since been built into a system by the so-called father of VAT, Maurice Lauré, who was then the joint director of the French tax authorities. The VAT was implemented in France in 1954. Manufacturing-level VATs were introduced shortly thereafter in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal in the 1960s,2 around the time that these former French colo- nies became independent. Brazil, by the fiscal reform of 1965, introduced a traditional VAT that applied at all stages of production. The VAT’s expansion was lim-3 ited to less than 10 countries in the late 1960s. In1965 the VAT was not yet a worldwide success, as