关于VAT税的概念详见下面两篇文章：
What is a VAT tax? （全文见下面的链接 1）
A VAT is similar to a sales tax or other consumption tax. It’s a percentage of the price that gets added on to the goods and services you buy at the store or online. But the way the tax is collected is different.
In a sales tax, the tax is collected only when a customer buys a product, “whereas, under a value-added tax, the tax is actually collected in stages along the production process,” Kyle Pomerlau, chief economist and vice president of economic analysis at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, told the PBS NewsHour.
Here’s how it works: To make a T-shirt, a clothing company would buy fabric from a supplier for $5, for example. The supplier charges the clothing company the 10 percent value-added tax, or 50 cents, for a total of $5.50. The supplier then sends that 50 cents to the federal government.
Once the T-shirt is made, a clothing company sells it to a department store for $10, plus $1 in VAT, for a total of $11. The clothing company then gets a rebate from the federal government for 50 cents because it already paid 50 cents to the fabric supplier.
A customer then comes into the department store and buys the shirt for $20. The department store charges the customer the 10 percent VAT, or $2, for a grand total of $22. The department store will then get a rebate of $1 from the federal government because it paid the other $1 to the clothing company in VAT.
Notice that the total of the federal VAT of 10 percent on the final sale of the T-shirt has been collected along the way. The federal government collected its $2 from the $20 purchase (50 cents from the fabric supplier, 50 cents from the clothing company and $1 from the department store).
另一篇解释VAT的文章：
WHAT IS A VAT? （全文见下面的链接 2）
A VAT, which effectively would impose a national sales tax on U.S. consumers, is levied on the "value added" to goods and services as they pass through each stage of the production process. While a VAT can operate several ways, according to the Congressional Budget Office: "It is typically administered by taxing the total value of sales of all businesses, but allowing businesses to claim a credit for taxes paid on their purchases of raw materials, intermediate materials, and capital goods from other businesses." For a particular product, every time there is a transaction which adds value, that extra value is subject to the VAT.Since businesses receive a credit for the taxes they have paid, the total tax, regardless of at which stage of production it was levied, ends up being added to the final sales price and paid by the consumer.
No matter how many steps there are in the production process, one or ten, a fixed percent of the final price of the product would represent the value added tax, just as a retail sales tax is a fixed percent of the final product price. Unlike a sales tax, however, the cost of the VAT to consumers would be hidden. Unless politicians took the unlikely step of requiring retailers to state explicitly the portion of the sales price due to the tax, consumers would not be aware of the tax.
In theory, a VAT could be imposed on all economic transactions. Many VAT proposals, however, exclude necessities such as food, housing, and medical care. This reduces the tax burden on consumers buying these items, but such exemptions add to the accounting complexity and costs for businesses. Imagine, for instance, a firm having to categorize all purchases according to their tax status, and then having to submit numerous forms to receive the credit due on VAT paid. As the preceding table illustrates, the VAT's revenue-raising capacity varies depending on whether the tax is imposed on a "comprehensive base" or if major consumption items are excluded.
2. https://www.heritage.org/taxes/report/how-value-added-tax-would-harm-the-us-economy
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