My understanding is that EU nations all have VAT, not sales tax; both are broadly consumption taxes, but they function rather differently (VAT charged at each stage of production vs sales tax only at final sale to consumer, among other differences.). VAT is sort of opposite of sales tax for businesses as payers; they pay VAT on goods bought as production inputs (and collect it on behalf of government on items they sell downstream on the chain of production), but do not pay it on what they consume for internal operations (in effect, to the extent thise internal operations contribute to the value added to the product, that is what the people downstream in the chain of production are paying VAT for.)