The Value-Added Tax, a sales tax that applies at every level of business transactions, is an easy tax for governments to collect, and a hard tax to evade.

France, they're the world champion at soaking the rich on taxes. And at one point, they had what they called a hyper tax, 75 percent, and Gérard Depardieu and many others left the country.

Relative to the world's other advance democracies, Americans get off easy on tax day. Of the 35 richest countries, the U.S. ranks 32nd in total tax burden.

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.

The Value-Added Tax, a sales tax that applies at every level of business transactions, is an easy tax for governments to collect, and a hard tax to evade.

There's a tradeoff. Yeah, I lose the deduction that I really like, but my tax rate is going to go down, and I don't have to fill out that form anymore. It's much simpler, rates are lower, and that tradeoff has worked in many countries. Many countries have just cleaned house of all those exemptions in order to provide lower rates, and people buy it.

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