"d)." It has always been cascading embedded tax costs, Nightie, and it's a damned shame you know nothing about them since they do exist and were a big reason that many of the VAT countries converted to VATs - to try to eliminate such costs and make their own products more competitive in other countries.They had business turnover taxes which is a cascading tax. Try and understand the difference.
Income-based taxes also contain cascading embedded tax costs as has been shown many times on these threads.
And the point is that these VAT countries converted to VATs from tax systems other than any sales tax that was at all like a FairTax system. They had tax cascading they were trying to eliminate - and that's no doubt a big reason why they did not go to a flat tax (which has cascading very much like any other income-based tax).