It’s time to extinguish any lingering Christmas cheer. Today’s topic is over-bearing and tyrannical tax administration. To be more specific, we’re going to look at the extent to which taxpayers are mistreated during the process of collecting revenue. Yes, the amount…
Daily Analysis
A Victory for the IMF…and a Defeat for Good Fiscal Policy
It’s not easy being a libertarian, particularly if you follow public policy. Thomas Jefferson almost certainly was right when he wrote that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” Heck, just look at how small government…
OECD Appeasement is a Losing Strategy
Writing for Hong Kong’s Harbour Times, CF&P President Andrew Quinlan and I recently coauthored a piece explaining why appeasing the radical demands of the OECD is a losing strategy. Simply put, the global tax collectors will not be satisfied with anything…
Ryan-Murray Budget Deal Replaces Real Spending Restraint of Sequester with Budget Gimmicks and Back-Door Tax Hikes
How Disappointing, but how predictable. Politicians approved legislation in 2011 that was supposed to impose a modest bit of spending restraint over the next 10 years. It wasn’t much. The enforcement mechanism, known as sequestration, merely was supposed to guarantee…
FATCA System Fails Government Probe, Threatens Privacy
Despite spending more than $8.6 million so far, with another $8 million projected to be spent still, on developing the online portal for handling the registration of foreign financial institutions for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), the IRS is still…
Massive Double Taxation Is a Self-Inflicted Tax Injury that Undermines American Competitiveness and Job Creation
Back in the 1960s, Clint Eastwood starred in a movie entitled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I was thinking that might be a good title for today’s post about some new research by Michelle Harding, a tax economist for the OECD. But then I realized that her study on…
Progress on the Laffer Curve*
The title of this piece has an asterisk because, unfortunately, we’re not talking about progress on the Laffer Curve in the United States. Even Keynes himself accepted this. Like many other economists throughout the ages, he understood and agreed with the principles…
The “Stupid Party” Strikes Again: Congressional Republicans Poised to Give Up Sequester Victory
There’s a saying in the sports world about how last-minute comebacks are examples of “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.” I don’t like that phrase because it reminds me of the painful way my beloved Georgia Bulldogs were defeated a couple of weeks ago by…
Another Misguided Plan to Burden America with a Value-Added Tax
It’s no secret that I dislike the value-added tax. But this isn’t because of its design. The VAT, after all, would be (presumably) a single-rate, consumption-based system, just like the flat tax and national sales tax. And that’s a much less destructive way of raising…
Thanks to Obamacare and the IRS, You’re at Risk of Having Your Identity Stolen and Your Bank Account Emptied
There are many reason I don’t like Obamacare, including its punitive impact on taxpayers and the way it takes our healthcare system even further from a market-based approach. But now I’m increasingly worried Obamacare also is creating a playground for hackers and…