Re:IANAL, but I AM an economist (Score 1)

Sales taxes force businesses to be (unpaid) tax collectors.

Sales taxes eg VAT require accounts in a particular format, require you to collect the money, collect the details and send these off to the tax collector. Thus a business may have to have two separate accounting systems to cope with the tax and the business

Large businesses have finance departments that can handle this without problems, for small businesses the overhead is proportionately larger

BTW for US residents VAT works on added value. An example, I buy goods at £100, pay VAT £17.50, do something and sell them at £200, collecet VAT £35.00. I reclaim the VAT I have paid and send the difference to the VAT collector (£17.50 in this case). You can get VAT back, for example if the product is a book, no VAT is payable when sold, so the tax collector sends you a cheque for any VAT you have paid!