Perhaps, but that isn't what is meant by our current system behaving like a vat. That's more of your word games.
Only profitable business pays income tax, but there are other federal tax costs that get rolled into prices.
What about any payroll taxes paid by the business. What about any compliance costs (like GM spending 2.3 million on tax consultants to help minimize their taxes), what about ALL the suppliers in the chain who may have had income taxes, payroll taxes, and compliance costs.
A VAT taxes the value added at each stage. Our current system doesn't do this. It's not a VAT. A NRST is more of a VAT than our current system. The retail price is just the sum of all the "values added" throughout the chain; thus, taxing the retail price is taxing the value added to a product.