Josh Barro, Columnist

Value-Added Tax Would Raise Tons for U.S. Coffers

May 2, 2012 at 7:01 PM EDT

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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With the exception of the U.S., every country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has a value-added tax -- one on business sales that functions much like a retail sales tax. It’s time for the U.S. to join that club.

The is that they have a broad base, and they don’t discourage investment. They can raise a lot of money without causing nearly as much economic damage as income taxes. They are also much harder to evade than sales taxes.

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