This year has seen numerous scandals followed by public concern over the extent to which government agencies are violating their privacy rights. Much of the focus has been on the NSA and national security, but the bigger threat to domestic rights may ultimately come from the IRS. A few years ago, Congress passed the Foreign […]

The relationship between federal and state governments – the division of power between the two levels being known as federalism – is an integral part of the American constitutional system. Federalism uses separate and competing spheres of sovereignty to check the growth and power of government as a whole. Unfortunately, that system has been steadily […]

[Download Coalition Letter] Dear Member of the U.S. House of Representatives: We write to urge you to vote yes on the bipartisan Amash-Conyers amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2014 (H.R. 2397). Rep. Amash’s proposed amendment would defund mass, blanket surveillance of the phone or Internet records of Americans who are not […]

The unemployment rate in Washington DC is 8.5%, a point higher than the national average. Compared to the rest of the nation, the District is poverty and crime-ridden. Given these facts, you’d think the DC Council would welcome the nation’s largest employer to the area. But that’s failing to take into account the fact that […]

The Marketplace Fairness Act, a misguided attempt to allow expanded sales tax collection online, passed the Senate on Monday, though its fate in the House is less clear. Also less clear is whether the law passes constitutional muster. At the very least it severely undermines the federalist system established by our founding document. Central to […]

Yesterday, an article in The Wall Street Journal by Ben DiPietro reported that Senator Rand Paul is holding up “FATCA treaties” in the Senate. If only it were so, but this is simply untrue. There are no such FATCA treaties. The treaties in question are separate tax agreements that have nothing specifically to do with […]

This article appeared in PolicyMic.

Thanks to tax competition and beginning with the cuts under Reagan and Thatcher, global tax rates have declined over the last several decades. In order to remain economically competitive, politicians have had to refrain from the excessive fleecing of taxpayers and businesses – or at least settled for confiscating less wealth than they otherwise would. […]

Hardly anyone stands up for taxpayers. It’s the classic problem of concentrated interests and defused costs. Those who benefit from profligate government spending are strongly motivated to lobby for their pet handout. But every individual bit of waste only adds a tiny burden on any individual taxpayer, as the costs are spread out over the […]