You're assuming that the regulations for implementing a VAT are straight-forward. The European experience has shown otherwise. They have all sorts of convoluted regulations on how much to tax each stage of production. It has created a(nother) bureaucratic nightmare over there. Given how our tax code has mutated over the years, it wouldn't take too long before the same thing happened here. Different businesses would continue to seek advantage by giving bribes (AKA campaign donations) to get the code modified to help them and hurt their competitors.

Perhaps you misunderstood what I wrote or perhaps I wasn't clear. While I'd prefer a national sales tax to the mess we have today, my preference is for a flat tax. Like I mentioned in the other post, without the repeal of the 16th Amendment, we'd almost certainly end up with both an income and sales tax within a few years. All it would take is for some emergency for Congress to pass a "temporary" income tax and we'd be back to where we are today, with the additional burden of the sales tax. There's no way in hell that the 16th is going to be repealed, so I'm hesitant about the sales tax idea.

A sales tax does have the appearance of being spread across everyone, but we have recent experience that suggests otherwise. Consider what is happening in states with high cigarette taxes - smuggling has increased dramatically as people try to evade the tax. On a national level, it would be harder but not impossible for such smuggling to take place. I think it would depend on the severity of the tax rate whether people would consider smuggling worthwhile.

The sales tax would probably be written to exclude certain critical things like food and medicine. There would be a strong incentive to get additional things excluded, leading to new corruption opportunities. In the end, what tax rate would we have to charge to generate the necessary revenues to run the government? I've heard the number 25% batted around. Adding 25% to the price of a car or a house would be a huge burden, especially for those with lower incomes.

As for the flat tax, it has been tried with success in Russia and Iraq.