@2unlimited: It is as the name say: value added tax its an extra tax on products (and services) purchased by private consumers (business to business you can deduct it). And the state decide how much it will be (but in EU not lower than lowest allowed in order to not "steal customers" from other member states) for example in Norway its 25 % while in Poland it is 23 %. And no it is not only used as a toll for foreign products. Its used on products both foreign and homemade, only for export the tax is deducted to help the export. Between EU states there is no deduction and customers still have to pay it.
Oh and I will tell you a little "secret" the Value added tax brings a lot more money to the state than income tax, yes even in Norway
https://www.statsbudsjettet.no/Stats...ger/?pid=89003 "merverdi avgift". In other nations where the income tax is not so extreme and there is no tax on savings and no tax on stuff companies own like chains (so companies do not have to go bankrupt when they have a bad year in order to pay the tax on savings that are unsellable) the VAT is the biggest income the state got. So in other states income tax is more like "envy tax" than it is really necessary to run the state. In Poland for example adding a little more than 1 % value added tax and removing income tax + then being able to remove all bureaucracy required for the income tax would make the state actually have more and not less money (of course the politicians would just waste it but still). So now you know why VAT can be enough to run a state and even fund some "free" things if really, really necessary for humanitarian reasons.
As for USA then no I have not lived there, and before you ask no it is not my ideal state today. It was historically perfect in terms of economy (not freedom because of some laws from the past restricting peoples private life but those laws were then everywhere all over the world) before 1913 when the federal reserve bank became the first step to destroy the constitutional capitalist republic.