The Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork for imposing a European style Value Added Tax to the U.S. tax burden, floating the idea that a VAT would pay for huge government spending programs such as the trillion dollar healthcare plan and other stimulus and subsidy plans.
 
A VAT is a complex taxing mechanism, difficult to explain, but easy to hide.  Unlike a national sales tax, or “Fair Tax,” the VAT applies taxes to multiple levels of manufacturing and production.
 
“The only thing a VAT would ‘pay for’ would be thousands of new bureaucrats needed to implement this economy-choking scheme,” says Kerri Toloczko, IFL’s Senior Vice President of Policy.
 
“Neither the price nor the implementation of the VAT is transparent.  It does not appear either on sales receipts or income tax forms, even though consumers will be paying more at the retail sales level -- for the tax itself as well as its administrative costs to American businesses and the federal bureaucracy.”
 
“Americans of all political stripes are continuing to protest the cost of abusive government spending on their family incomes.  It is in this public climate that Democrats are talking up a massive but hidden tax, apparently thinking that because a consumer can’t see a VAT, they won’t protest a VAT.”
 
“That might have worked ten years ago, but not now.  When the American people shoot down the trial balloon that is VAT chat, Democrats will need steel umbrellas to protect them from the political shrapnel raining down on their heads.”