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…
Daily Analysis
If Even the International Monetary Fund Acknowledges the Laffer Curve, Why Doesn’t Obama Realize that Higher Tax Rates are All Pain and No Gain?
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…
Obama’s Corporate Tax Refom: Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic?
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…
Patriotism, Loyalty, Tax Competition, and “Tax Fugitives”
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…
How Can Obama Look at these Two Charts and Conclude that America Should Have Higher Double Taxation of Dividends and Capital Gains?
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…
Is Warren Buffett’s Support for Higher Taxes a Way of Paying Back Politicians for Big-Government Policies that Line His Pockets?
President Obama, echoed by the establishment media, routinely trumpets Warren Buffett’s support for higher taxes. If this rich guy is willing to pay more, the story goes, then surely the rest of us peasants should just roll over and acquiesce to the President’s…
The Worst Dollar-for-Dollar Spending in DC
Examples of government waste are not hard to find in Washington DC, but identifying the worst, most egregious instances of destructive spending is more difficult. Based on the facts cited by a new CF&P Libertas published earlier this week, a strong case can be…
Should the United Nations Have the Power to Impose Global Taxes?
What’s the worst policy idea that would cause the most damage to society? I’m tempted to say the value-added tax since our hopes of restraining the federal government will be greatly undermined if we give the buffoons in Washington a new source of revenue. Indeed,…
Debating at U.S. News & World Report, I Explain Double Taxation to the Economic Heathens
Never let it be said I back down from a fight, even when it’s the other team’s game, played by the other team’s rules, and for the benefit of the wrong person. And that definitely went through my mind when U.S. News & World Report asked me to contribute to their…
New Congressional Budget Office Numbers Once Again Show that Modest Spending Restraint Would Eliminate Red Ink
Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of fiscal discipline and limited annual spending increases to about 2 percent yearly. When CBO…