The only difference between sales tax and VAT is that VAT is applied at each stage of the production/sales chain, but only on the incremental value added at each stage, whereas sales tax is applied only at the very end of the chain on the entire value. The advantage of sales tax is that only the retail seller needs to worry about collecting it, and the advantage of VAT is that you don't need rules to figure out which stage along the chain is supposed to be the "final" one. (Consider small businesses buying product from a place like Costco. They either get double-taxed, or have to get some sort of exemption.)

In terms of the actual money collected, the two are the same. An X% tax rate results in the retail buyer paying X% more.