Today marks the 247th anniversary since the British government passed the Stamp Act, a direct tax levied on all materials printed for commercial or legal use in the colonies. The tax faced a backlash from the colonies and was decried as taxation without…
The OECD, although a frequent villain, is not the only threat to fiscal sovereignty. Organizations such as the UN have long sought to tax carbon, financial transactions, and even emigration. But the latest in a long list of attempts to institute international taxes…
Early in 2010, I wrote about a reprehensible IRS plan to create a cartel in the tax preparation industry, which would screw small firms and entrepreneurs to help line the pockets of big companies such as H&R Block. And, earlier this year, I specifically criticized…
Last year, while lounging on the beach in the Caribbean…oops, I mean while doing off-site research, I developed the first iteration of a rule to describe how fiscal policy should operate. Good fiscal policy exists when the private sector grows faster than the public…
I mentioned yesterday that Senator Johnson of Wisconsin did a good job at the Senate Budget Committee’s hearing on tax reform. Today, I want to elaborate on two of his points. First, he asked all three of the witnesses what the maximum marginal tax rate on any…
This interview with the IRS Commissioner is really irritating. He wants us to believe that all the problems exist because of bad laws enacted by Congress. I certainly agree that the crowd in Washington is venal, corrupt, and duplicitous. But the IRS takes a bad…
I speculated last year that the political elite finally might be realizing that higher tax rates are not the solution to Greece’s fiscal situation. Simply stated, you can only squeeze so much blood out of a stone, and pushing tax rates higher cripples growth and…
American companies are hindered by what is arguably the world’s most punitive corporate tax system. The federal corporate rate is 35 percent, which climbs to more than 39 percent when you add state corporate taxes. Among developed nations, only Japan is in the same…
I fight to preserve tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy for the simple reason that politicians are less likely to impose destructive tax policy if they know that labor and capital can escape to jurisdictions with more responsible fiscal…
As discussed yesterday, the most important number in Obama’s budget is that the burden of government spending will be at least $2 trillion higher in 10 years if the President’s plan is enacted. But there are also some very unsightly warts in the revenue portion of the…