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…
Daily Analysis
The Laffer Curve KO’s the IRS
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…
Grilled about Cayman Investments, Jack Lew Chooses the I’m-a-Moron Defense
Every so often, you get a “teaching moment” in Washington, and we now have an excellent opportunity to educate lawmakers about the “offshore” world because President Obama’s nominee to be Treasury Secretary has been caught with his hand in the tax haven cookie jar….
Marketplace Fairness Act Targets Domestic Tax Competition
Like so many bad ideas in Washington, the recently introduced “Marketplace Fairness Act” has bipartisan support. But there’s nothing fair about allowing states to reach outside their borders to tax businesses headquartered elsewhere. In fact, the…
FATCA Overreach Will Sabotage American Global Competitiveness
If Congress set out right now to craft a law to sabotage the global competitiveness of the US economy, they’d have trouble coming up with one better than what they passed in 2010 in the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
The Great TCI Anti-VAT Mutiny of 2013
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…
Another Hypocritical Leftist Caught with His Hand in the Tax-Haven Cookie Jar
I’m a huge fan of so-called tax havens. I’ve been working for more than 10 years to protect and promote the values of tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy. The bureaucrats at the OECD even threatened to have me tossed in a Mexican jail because I…
George Orwell Surely Would Be Amused by the Statolatry in the United Kingdom
In previous posts, I’ve expressed pessimism about the future of the United Kingdom, largely because all political parties have a statist mentality. I criticized Gordon Brown, the former Labor Party Prime Minister, for being a compulsive redistributionist, big spender,…
Exposing the Absurdity of Washington’s Anti-Sequester Hysteria
To save America from the supposedly “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts caused by sequestration, President Obama has instead asked Congress to approve an alternative fiscal package containing additional tax increases. So why is the sequester so bad? Does it slash the…
US Relying on the Ignorance of Foreign Governments to Propel FATCA Fiscal Imperialism
I wrote recently about the need to draw a line in the sand on FATCA. Long story short, if current efforts to form an international tax cartel are not halted immediately, we can look forward to a future with a bleak economic outlook due to depressed worldwide…