VAT provides an incentive for businesses to register and keep invoices, because they automatically pay more for tax they can't show invoice.

I just found out that many people in the US have opinions against it when Trump/Vance did bring out VAT into the discussion, so I felt I had to confirm my assumption that VAT is nearly universal. In some ways the US attitude is like UK was in the 1900s when it comes to infrastructure of governance "old things work just fine."

Firstly, GST was added at the till. So something is marked as $5 on the shelf, ends up costing more than $5 at the till. Bonkers.

VAT is included in the delivery price. Says $5.99 on the shelf? You get a penny back from $6.

From a shop owner point of view, VAT is also a lot easier to administer. You don't care if the customer is VAT registered or not. That's their problem, not yours. GST was a headache. Some stuff goes yo end users (so collect tax) others goes to resellers (so dont). Here's a shocking outcome - rampant tax fraud... (fraud with VAT is still possible, but the tax loss is only on the vendors markup.)

Obviously different jurisdictions do VAT and GST differently, but when I travel to the US it feels like the stone age.