A VAT tax makes a lot of sense. It would reduce the incentive for large market quasi-monopoly seeking companies to optimize for no profits to avoid taxes. The current dynamic is- why pay taxes when you can spend it to expand your market share?
Increasing the income tax and taxing capital gains at regular income rates, along with bolstering estate taxes on the rich, are the ideal near-term solutions to the US budget problem. The US still has a lot of slack taxing capacity on the wealthy. That should be maxed out long before we look at a VAT.
> That should be maxed out long before we look at a VAT.
This is relative. The US government sucks at being efficient.
They might even make the economy more efficient. I'll leave that argument to the economists, though.