There are arguments against VAT but your argument is nonsensical. It sounds like you're thinking of how sales taxes work. The VAT rate varies throughout the EU

There are arguments against VAT but your argument is nonsensical. It sounds like you're thinking of how sales taxes work. The VAT rate varies throughout the EU so I'm not sure what you're basing the 21% on. In most of the EU that I'm aware of, VAT must be included in all listed consumer prices because that's what the consumer pays. VAT is only excluded by default in B2B prices so yes, sometimes as a business you have to double-check listed prices to see what you'll actually pay. It sounds like you're arguing for consistent price labelling regulations (aka consumer protection laws), not against VAT. VAT also doesn't really affect businesses. Businesses collect VAT from sales and pay it on purchases, then declare the difference to their tax agency and either pay any excess they collected or get refunded what they overpaid. It's literally a zero sum game and dealing with it in accounting is trivial on top of everything else you already have to keep track of. The problem with VAT is that for consumers it is an inflexible tax that acts regressively in practice: because it's a flat tax on all goods, customers with less money spend proportionally more of their income on VAT than customers with a lot of money. It also doesn't apply to business expenses (due to the aforementioned zero sum) and people earning higher incomes are more likely to have access to "job perks" that convert regular expenses to business expenses (e.g. business lunches, company vehicles, etc). If you wanted to reduce the burden on lower income households, you'd not just abolish the VAT but also abolish any other sales tax and instead raise income tax (especially the ceiling, which often lumps in millionaires and billionaires despite the 1000x difference in scale which often translates to an exponential difference in lifestyle) or (re)introduce a wealth tax (to discourage wealth hoarding and instead encourage reinvestment and commerce).