[PeterisP]

One way to simplify sales tax without destroying the funding of local governments is to have the relevant portion of sales tax flow to the local governments while removing their ability to set rates and rules on the sales tax - so they get equitable funding, but it's uniform across neighbouring municipalities, and a business can ignore the complexity of how the tax is allocated between various levels of government. This obviously has a political impact and would cause local resistance, though, so it has to be pushed on from above.