Neil Williams wrote:
On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:14:58 -0700, Robert Neville wrote:

That's because VAT is standard across a country. In the US there are
thousands of taxing districts in every state, each with it's own adder
to the base rate.

Presumably only one applies to any given shop?

Different sales tax rates apply to different goods in my state. Also, in
my state, newspapers and magazines are not taxed. It's really obnoxious
to impose all these high sales tax collection costs on merchants.