Actually the VAT is more efficient. Less opportunities for evasion.
The vast majority of sales taxes are collected at the cash register by the major retailers, Walmart, Target, etc.
We don't need the federal government overseeing every product at every level of production.
Actually the VAT is more efficient. Less opportunities for evasion.
And many more opportunitie for fraud, as the invoice used to obtain a credit becomes a check written against the treasury. Guess what the market in bogus invoices to use as credits against VAT remittences is like in the EU.
As far as opportunities for evasion go, VATs are worse than for an retail sales tax, it is the small business and single proprietor that gets hit he hardest with the VAT in its startup costs and accounting regulations that are imposed to assure compliance in the complex structures of exemptions, zero rating and multiple rates that get thrown in by politicians as the play in the VAT infra-structure. What is happening in the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and everywhere else you can find the VAT is a continual expansion of underground barter and cash markets to avoid the VAT redtape and regulations that go with it.
The problem has become so acute the EU merely raises the threshold on the size of business required to register for the VAT and then the VAT rate to try to make up the loss, and still their evasion rises to ever higher levels appoachin 35% of the GDP of several nations in the EU.
There is nothing remotely efficient about the real world implementations of VAT, they are expensive for govenments to enforce and regulate, then cost ten times as much for businesses to accomodate the regulatory environment that comes part and parcel with VATs.