20% sales tax? I thought the 8% we pay was robbery. But, in my state, manufacturing equipment is exempt from that tax.
Worth noting, since I once founded and operated a UK Corporation registered for it...
It is not a GST (General Sales Tax), but a VAT (Value ADDED Tax). The CONCEPT was sold as simple, fair, even-handed, easy to administer, hard to cheat on, and with low reason to TRY to cheat. "Righteous", IOW. Started at below 5%.
A producer pays VAT on incoming raw materials, charges on outgoing finished product, nets back what they paid on the intake. TOTAL tax was meant to be hard-limited, not cumulative, whether there were two stages in production or a hundred and two.
Thus VAT was SOLD to pan-European electorates as a replacement for all other forms of tax!
Other taxes were retained, of course. A Politician doesn't even have to move his lips to lie.
VAT percentages went up. 20% is not the highest. Izzat bad news?
Well.. if one believes the funny-papers, even GOD settled for only TEN percent.
Anyone who resisted - the Swiss, not even EU members - was put under
extreme pressure - accusations of criminal "money laundering", even - to force them to raise their VAT so as not to drive adjacent-country business across a border.
As Italians very much do, in flocking to Swiss shopping centers near Lugano, etc.
And then?
As noted. A US or other NON-EU national can fill in a form, attach receipts, and claim BACK the VAT on exit from the EU.
Leaving the entire lot of miscreants empty-handed, altogether. So.. a "subsidy" to encourage exports? Sort of. And one that their own citizens are robbed of.
Twice, BTW, as they still have to make-up for the revenue shortfall each such claw-back causes.
"Advanced Economies?"
Sure they are. Right "up there",
sans pommade, in a direct lift from "bum cleaver" in De Sade's
The 120 Days of Sodom.
And
they voted for that!
Go figure...
