This reminds me of how in Germany, before there has been a value added tax, there'd been a revenue tax. It was lower, but you had to pay it on every $ of revenu

This reminds me of how in Germany, before there has been a value added tax, there'd been a revenue tax. It was lower, but you had to pay it on every $ of revenue, even if your profit margin was very small. So a lot of businesses started to vertically integrate. Once the system switched to one where you get back the tax for the things your business buys, businesses got broken up or grew in only one of the steps of their supply chain.