Tinfoil? get real; the current maze of the taxcode wasn't in the legislation either, it was written by IRS staff and foisted upon us as 'implementation' of the act that congress passed. The same will happen with any other act that congress passes. I agree that the current mess was 'communist inspired' but that isn't a reason to stick our necks in a bigger noose. Any sales tax (or VAT) will have to be permanently capped to be acceptable, otherwise it must be recognized as the foot in the door that it is.
Any sales tax (or VAT) will have to be permanently capped to be acceptable, otherwise it must be recognized as the foot in the door that it is.
Seeing a VAT taxes through purchases by business, and a retail sales tax is collected from end consumers only.
I fail to see how you figure a retail sales tax is a foot in the door to a VAT.
As it is the corporate income tax is much closer to a VAT than a retail sales tax is.
Make some small changes by setting a single flat rate, changing how capital assets are treated by expensing them instead of depreciating them and exempting investment income from taxation would turn a Corporate income tax into a subtraction method VAT right now.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/foundationmessage03-00.html
"Under the WTO definition of the term, a sales tax is an indirect tax, as is an European-style VAT. The economic equivalence of an European-style VAT and a subtraction-method VAT is well-established. A subtraction-method VAT is essentially identical to a business income tax except that all purchases of plant and equipment may be expensed, rather than depreciated as under current U.S. law."
Next step from there would be to change accounting around a bit, and morph into a full fledged credit/voucher system VAT as exists in the EU and is recommend by some to make our corporate tax system boarder adjustable under WTO rules.