Assessing value added tax compliance burden in Gulf Cooperation Council countries

In 2017, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE)) ratified the Unified Value Added Tax (VAT) Agreement, which set out the general principles for imposing VAT and mandated each GCC member state to introduce a VAT by January 2018. Four GCC countries have so far introduced VAT, namely, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Oman. None of these countries possess a mature tax system. In fact, they also lack a well-defined tax culture and tax morale, and their tax administrations are not yet well developed. Thus, the introduction of VAT could give rise to a serious issue regarding VAT compliance burden. In this context, this article aims (i) to examine the new VAT in the four GCC countries, and (ii) to compare qualitatively the likely VAT compliance burden among these four countries, and relative to other VAT-imposing countries, specifically member countries of the Forum on Tax Administration (FTA). We adopt the VAT Diagnostic Tool approach, which has been developed by an Australia-based research team and applied successfully to assess VAT compliance burden in FTA countries. The findings of the article suggests that while the four GCC countries belong to the medium VAT compliance burden group, they compare very favourably with FTA countries. More specifically, they perform above the FTA average in minimising compliance burden that arises from VAT policy complexity and administration complexity, but below FTA average in terms of revenue capabilities in meeting taxpayer service and compliance needs. A small number of policy recommendations are proposed with a view to maintaining or improving the good performance of GCC countries in terms of VAT complexity. They include: (i) formal recognition of the importance of tax system simplicity; (ii) use of VAT Diagnostic Tool Factors/indicators in guiding the design or simplification of VAT policy and administration; (iii) restraint from making VAT policy and administration changes without supporting evidence, and (iv) capacity building in tax administration.