The flip side of those estimates is that VAT-centered reforms don't do much to cut taxes directly for average wage earners. The Cruz and Paul plans resemble those of other Republicans in cutting rich people's tax bills a lot, but they offer less for the middle class. Taxpayers in the 40th through 50th percentile of filers, making between $29,000 and $35,000 a year, get a 1.2 percent increase in after-tax income from Cruz's plan.
Bush's plan gives them a 2.7 percent boost and Trump's 5.3 percent. (All of this, again, is from the Tax Foundation.) Swapping the payroll tax for the VAT doesn't net people much money. Any additional gain is indirect, from the added growth the reform may cause.
Conservatives aren't as concerned about the Cruz and Paul VATs as they would be with plans that were added on top of the current system. But there is some worry. Norquist tells me he thinks it would be better to let companies write off the cost of both investments and wages, which would make such plans easier to explain and defend.
Lawrence Kudlow, the influential supply- side economist, says he likes a lot of the components of the senators' plans but resists this part: "The inclusion of a VAT troubles me. Have we thought this through?"
Value-added taxes pose a trade-off: They make taxes more efficient but less visible. Conservatives have long wanted taxes to be easy to comprehend and thus to resist.
Ronald Reagan went so far as to say that he thinks "taxes should hurt." Cruz and Paul, in passing over their VATs in silence and omitting any mention of the way their "business" taxes would affect workers and consumers, are merely accentuating the attractive side of their plans. But they're also lending credence to the old worry that tax burdens can indeed be hidden.