Except that one is clearly visible to every citizen and the other is hidden.You are mistaken. A credit-invoice VAT is not hidden. It would appear to a customer just like a NRST, the pretax price and the tax collected would be the same. Only the collection method is different.
VAT
Payment
Credit
(Tax - Credit)Raw Materials Manufacturer Wholesaler Distributor Retailer
"It would appear to a customer just like a NRST,"
Please definie "customer". Are you actually stating that the average citizen will see the portion of the price that accounted for the taxation? I'm doubtful that will occur.
OK, I took another look at your table and it is a bit clearer to me now. As you present the scenario in that table, what is the difference between the VAT you support and the NRST? The only difference I see is the added comlexity in your VAT. The retail customer still pays the cost of the tax.
Why do you support adding complexity?
$20 tax charged on a $100 item sold at retail, just like a 20% NRST.
Only in in your simplistic rendition divorced from reality, you assume no implementation nor overhead costs associated with the VAT which adds substantially to the burden over the costs of implemeting a single stage tax such as the NRST. If you assume total price remains constant in your calculation then you must also assume that wages, return on capital must fall in a VAT relative to an NRST and consequent lower revenues to government for loss of demand out of a decline in individual purchasing power.
OTOH, if you assume that the price of the product rises to compensate for the increased cost under the VAT, then you must compensate for reduction in demand for the product.
This is especially true where government's proclivity to monkey in the internals of a VAT to achieve social parity and other "good" things are taken into account which gives rise to all the problems that have been experienced in the VAT implementations of the EU, Australia and Canada.
Australia is especially an interesting study as their GST was a "revenue neutral" replacement of a single stage sales tax with a VAT, the consequences are readily apparent in their problems with rising underground cash economy
and inflation
as well as burdening the economy with such a higher tax burden that the Australian government tends to actually try to hide it's VAT impositions from the view of its electorate by taking it out of general revenue reports to understate revenue burden with respect to their GDP.
To encourage the Aussie government's growth and social spending. Seems more revenues to government tends to just increase a governments tendancy to grow even faster rather than look to reduce it burden on the nation's economy and the people.
Money machine indeed which historically ends in a moribund economy riddle with inflation and ultimately declining government revenues as the VAT's effects wind to its progressions the political shennanigans it fosters:
How a Value Added Tax Would Harm the U.S. Economy Sweden’s Welfare State A Paradise Lost Why do Europeans Work so Little?