I’m not a fan of loopholes in the tax code. I’ve complained about the number of pages in the tax code, the number of provisions in the tax code, and I’ve even groused about the rising number of pages in the instruction manual for the 1040 tax form. And I’ve specifically come out against tax […]

ll statists want much bigger government, but not all of them are honest about how to finance a Greek-sized welfare state. The President, for instance, wants us to believe that the rich are some sort of fiscal pinata, capable of generating endless amounts of tax revenue. Using IRS tax data, I’ve shown that this is […]

I’m a proponent of a pro-growth and non-corrupt tax code. I mostly write and talk about the flat tax, though I’d be happy to instead accept a national sales tax if we could somehow get rid of the 16th Amendment and replace it with something so ironclad that even Justices such as John Roberts and […]

Notwithstanding hysterical rhetoric from the White House, the bureaucracies, and the various pro-spending lobbies in Washington, the sequester does not mean “vicious” or “draconian” spending cuts. I wish that was the case. All it does is restrain spending so that it grows by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years rather than $2.5 trillion. We […]

What’s the revenue-maximizing tax rate? Since I’m interested in the growth-maximizing tax rate instead, I don’t think that’s even a legitimate question. That being said, it seems like everyone – both on the left and on the right – should agree that it makes no sense to set tax rates so high that the government […]

I did a video several years ago on the link between big government and big corruption, and I periodically revisit the issue by citing disgusting examples of sleaze and cronyism ranging from the Export-Import Bank to the racial spoils scam in Alaska. The folks at Learn Liberty also have a great video on this topic, […]

As an economist with a boring personality (sorry to be redundant), I sometimes focus on numbers. And when contemplating the cost of regulation and red tape, there are some numbers that should frighten all of us. Americans spend 8.8 billion hours every year filling out government forms. The economy-wide cost of regulation is now $1.75 […]

The value-added tax is a pernicious levy. It’s basically a hidden form of national sales tax, imposed every time a transaction occurs at any stage of the production process. But what irks me about the VAT is not its design (indeed, it shares some key characteristics with the flat tax). What gets me agitated about […]