She is more that only wrong she lied!!! If she said that a 9% sell tax plus a 9% tax on business THAT WILL ACT AS A “VAT” tax she first ignore that we already have a 36% profit tax on business that in her logic is in law.
Second.She has no knowledge how VAT taxes are in practice. As I lived under them I can state that even few people understand them.
A VAT tax is usually applied like this.
At the retail point is like sells tax in America’s states.
At the resellers level is applied for everything is purchased and paid fast, monthly or at most every 3 months in few countries. (and it requires almost everywhere a centralized system of invoices emitted by a central authority with unique serial numbers for all economical agent's see 1099 for everything over $600 in obamacare in my opinion an attempt to build a data base for VAT).
And after a product is sold by that reseller to a retailer or to an other reseller the government reimburse the re seller for the VAT he paid for the mostly in VAT for raw materials he used and hardly anything for the services he used from third party providers IE internet, utilities, etc
In practice a VAT tax is not repetitive (like a profit tax) but it adds in average 5% over nominal value officially stated due to difference in commercial pricing from one step the next step for each product on all steps. ( a ultra stealth form of taxation)
And as a corollary of everything governments usually promise to reimburse the vat to resellers in about 3 mounts of the sell to a reseller but in practice is often late (they are using the money).