Sales tax creates more unnecessary pain than value added tax
I'm going to take a wild guess and say the author isn't from the US. He includes sales tax on items purchased for resale.... which is an exception in every state that I know of. Even if you purchase an item at retail with sales tax, you can file to receive the money back from the state. Additionally sales tax has nothing to do with whether your supply chain is fully integrated, and hiring all of your suppliers as employees doesn't affect sales tax.What he also misses: is that if I sell something to another retailer for resale (meaning he says he's going to resell what I sold him), I don't charge him sales tax on the entire purchase. Not until it reaches the final consumer is sales tax charged.He says this isn't true, and links to a wikipedia article on a gross receipts tax. This is another confusion on his part. Some states do not have income taxes, and instead have gross receipt taxes. This is an alternative to business income taxes, not sales taxes.The confusion is understandable. No one has ever accused the US of having a simple tax system.