There's a whole theory about which taxes economic actors can get away with passi...

There's a whole theory about which taxes economic actors can get away with passing on, and which they have to bear.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence

It's pretty intriguing, and doesn't align very well with our intuition. As far as I can tell, your hypothesis about the impact of VAT is not really supported by that.