VAT scares me, too, because you just KNOW that the politicians will use it to give favortism to big business donors to give them a competitive edge. You'll never be able to keep up with just who is paying how much.
The biggest advantage of a VAT is that it can be rebated on foreign sales without violating the WTO rules. The US dollar is currently quite weak because of trade deficits (we buy more abroad than we sell abroad). If we adopted VAT, we could sell more abroad because foreign sales would not be subject to the VAT.