Or, say something less polite to get the attention of the anarcho-tyrannical statists. Vats are for boiling oil and such like to pour on the invading barbarian hordes…
*heh*
As opposed to the very open and transparent FairTax plan, a VAT is a stealth tax that hides its burden at various levels of production and delivery of goods and services, just as the current taxation model does. As George Will says in a recent article, strangely in (a semi, half-hearted, limp) defense of a VAT,
Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking — a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations.
While this is a simplistic model, it’s good enough for the purposes of defending axing the 16th Amendment and the whole array of IRS levied taxes it supports, as Will suggests. It is not a good reason to advance a VAT, though, since VATs tend to hide the costs to the economy (not just the end consumer) just as the current tax model does. The FairTax model keeps the tax right up front where the purchaser of whatever (NEW) good or service can see it and be reminded of just what his “feddle gummint” is costing. And that’s a central reason why many politicians *spit* do not like it. The more obscure and hidden from direct view the costs of government are, the easier it is for them to play nearly brain-dead sheeple.