The U.S. has the most complicated and difficult tax system in the world; we've made it hard to file and pay taxes.

Corporations use all sorts of complex stratagems to move their profits overseas, and thus escape the U.S. income tax.

It turns out a VAT - a value-added tax - is a very easy tax to collect and a very hard tax to evade. It's a really good idea. It was invented about 60 years ago in France, of course. Because they're so good at taxing. They had a business tax that was easy to evade, and the head of the French IRS invented this value-added tax, which is very hard to evade.

We cut tax exemptions in 1986, it was the most admired tax reform in U.S. history. Congress and the president worked together then to eliminate scores of loopholes and exemptions and deductions; this made taxes much simpler, and allowed a major cut in tax rates.

If you get rid of all these giveaways and loopholes and deductions and credits, then you can sharply lower the rates.

President Trump repeatedly says that "America is the highest-taxed country in the world." This is an alternative fact. We pay less in taxes, and our government spends less, as a share of our total wealth, than our counterparts in Western Europe and East Asia. But Trump is right when it comes to corporate tax rates; the U.S. corporate income tax right is among the highest in the world.

The higher the rate, the more interest there is in avoiding the tax. Either you move or you shift your profits overseas, as American corporations have proven very good at doing.