One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on…
Dan Mitchell
Daniel J. Mitchell is the President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. Mitchell advocates limited government and fundamental tax reform, and is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations.
In addition to fiscal policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security reform – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts.
Growing Opposition to Obama’s IRS Proposal to Make Banks Put Foreign Tax Law above U.S. Tax Law
Why impose a regulatory burden on a weakened banking sector when it has nothing to do with enforcing American tax law?
A Real-Life Welfare Queen
During his 1976 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan popularized the notion of “welfare queens” who bilked redistribution programs for thousands of dollars. It has since become non-PC to use such a term, but that’s never stopped me. Here’s a…
Coca-Cola CEO Says China Now More “Business Friendly” than the United States
Having grown up during the Cold War, I never though I would write a sentence like the title of this blog post, but there have been lots of firsts during the reign of Obama. When the head of a major multinational company says the American tax system is worse than the…
The Solyndra Scandal Reeks, but the Entire Green-Energy Program Is a Scam
I’ve commented on the corruption of the Solyndra scandal, but it’s important to understand this is not just a story of sleaze. From an economic perspective, the real problem is that green-energy programs cause a misallocation of capital. Simply stated, government…
Explaining the Perverse Impact of Double Taxation with a Chart
Whether I’m criticizing Warren Buffett’s innumeracy or explaining how to identify illegitimate loopholes, I frequently write about the perverse impact of double taxation. By this, I mean the tendency of politicians to impose multiple layers of taxation on income that…
Hell No, American Taxpayers Should Not Bail out the IMF
This is getting surreal. We now have layers of bailouts around the world. Different nations are doing their own bailouts. On top of that, the Europeans have set up something called the European Financial Stability Facility, which does bailouts across the continent….
Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan Is Great in Theory, but…
I became a big admirer of Herman Cain back in the 1990s when he was a member of the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (aka, the Kemp Commission). I worked as a staffer for the Commission and was able to observe Mr. Cain in action over a period of…
A Picture of Tax Code Complexity and Corruption
Have you ever wondered why the tax code is a Byzantine mess that requires 72,000 pages of law and regulation? Hopefully you don’t ponder such dark and dreary thoughts, but the answer is that politicians and lobbyists have spent nearly 100 years creating all sorts of…
More Evidence for School Choice
School choice doesn’t automatically mean every child will be an educational success, but evidence from other nations certainly suggests it means better overall performance. Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands are just some of the countries that have seen good results…