History
VAT was invented by a French economist in 1954 as taxe sur la valeur ajoutée (French: TVA). Maurice Lauré, joint director of the French tax authority, the Direction générale des impôts, was first to introduce VAT with effect from 10 April 1954 for large businesses, and it was extended over time to all business sectors.
In 1977, the Council of the European Communities sought to harmonise the national VAT systems of its member states by issuing the Sixth Directive to provide a uniform basis of assessment and replacing the Second Directive promulgated in 1967. In 2006, the Council sought to improve on the Sixth Directive by recasting it.
Read more about this topic: European Union Value Added Tax
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)