Businesses always pay VAT on purchases, and collect VAT on sales, but can reclaim the paid VAT if purchase was done for business purposes. This basically means that the ultimate wholly VAT payer is always the end consumer (person, not business).
Every business that sells goods/services in VAT country collects VAT and transfers it to tax authority. There's no any advantage or disadvantage for someone, everyone plays by the same rules.
To sum it up, businesses "do not pay" VAT (technically they pay, but then reclaim it at the end of the month). All VAT burden always falls on the end consumer. Wikipedia says, that VAT is similar to sales tax, but since I'm not too familiar with sales tax, can't comment on that similarity.