But I do know when I spent $4.5 million renovating a hotel, I had to pay the sales and use tax on everything I bought from my state and others (Tenn has use tax laws).
We had these same discussions back in the late 1970's in college. I was arguing against NRST even then.
I might point out that your past experiences with "state" sales and use taxes are getting into the way of understanding the NRST of HR25 and what it does.
First is a strict retail on tax, made expressly visible to the electorate. That is one of its primary purposes is to make federal taxation visible to everyone.
Businesses do not pay the NRST on their purchases. Under the legislation you would not be pay the NRST on the things you buy for legitimate business use. Business purchases for legitimate business function are not taxed. Such a tax is not visible to the public as a whole, and defeats the intent of the legislation to assure maximum visiblity and knowing participation in the federal tax system.
I really do encourage you to read the legislation, you are making far to many erroneous assumptions about the NRST based on how states apply sales taxes.
Refer also: http://www.fairtax.org & http://www.salestax.org
This is what discriminates the NRST tax from a value added tax where a 'sales' tax is collected every time a product or raw material changes hands at a higher price (added value) than it was purchased for. The 'value added' system hides and buries taxes so that no one ever knows how much tax they are really paying when they make a purchase (as does our current system).