There's an independent trying to get to the right of the Republican candidate in the New Jersey gubernatorial race. He's proposing extensive property and corporate tax cuts to be replaced with what sounds like a vigorous VAT - he calls it a sales tax, but a "sales tax" that's applicable to things outside of retail sales - sounds like services, etc, from what he's talking about - is more of a value-added tax if you ask me.

It *sounds* good, but VATs require a pretty hefty social contract to work right. Once you put the whole of the small business community into the position of reporting their revenue in detail to the government and impose a significant surtax, there's a heck of an incentive for cheating. New Jersey is rather infamous for a, how should I put it, less-than-world-class social contract.