[ancient_geezer]

Hate to spoil your morning, but things are not always what they appear.

Seems the Russians have been learning from the Europeans and our Liberals on how to out fox the electorate, and our ever loving media has been more than busy throwing what appears to be a massive sales pitch at us for a European style income tax with VAT by giving it a new label (as usual) and half the truth:

Folks we are being handed a line of bovine excrement, which many are buying into simply because of a label put on it "Flat Tax".

[alloysteel]

Half truths, like half bricks, are easier to seize and hurl than the whole of either one. The VAT, so beloved of socialists and bureaucratic types the world over, is a consumption tax that is applied at every level. But in the end, the ultimate consumer pays the entire freight. So much more honest for only the retail customer to pay one assessment at the point of sale. The VAT alows the bureaucrats to enter every level between production or extraction of the raw materialsm through manufacture, every step of the way through middlemen, to the end of the merchandising chain. Full employment guaranteed to the government, capitalism kept chained at every step, and equal pain generated throughout the entire population.