A new study from the Adam Smith Institute in the United Kingdom provides overwhelming evidence that class-warfare tax policy is grossly misguided and self-destructive. The authors examine the likely impact of the 10-percentage point increase in the top income tax…
Daily Analysis
Jeffrey Sachs and the Fictional “Race to the Bottom” Caused by Tax Competition
Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University is a big booster of the discredited notion that foreign aid is a cure-all for poverty in the developing world, but he is now branching out and saying silly things about policy in other areas. In a column for the Financial Times, he…
Why General Electric’s Non-Existent Tax Bill Is Both Good News and Bad News
General Electric has received a lot of unwelcome attention for paying zero federal income tax in 2010, even though it reported $5.1 billion in U.S. profits. This is a good news-bad news situation. The good news is that GE’s clever tax planning deprived the government…
Yet Another Scheme to Fleece (and Monitor) Americans: A Tax on “Miles Driven”
I commented yesterday about the silly idea, being promoted by a few politicians, to impose a tax on toilet paper. That post mostly was an opportunity to have some fun mocking greedy government because even a dour pessimist like me doesn’t expect that idea to get very…
A Pun Contest to Describe a Tax on Toilet Paper?
The greed of the political class is boundless. They have figured out how to tax just about everything, including a tax on tanning salons to finance Obamacare. But for sheer ingenuity (in the philosophically perverted sense), I must tip my proverbial hat to the…
British Business Writer Explains: Thanks to Tax Competition and Tax Havens, the Greed of the Political Class Is Being Constrained
Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of tax competition because politicians are less likely to misbehave if the potential victims of plunder have the ability to escape across borders. Here is an excerpt from a superb article by Allister Heath, one of the U.K.’s…
Instead of Supporting Higher Taxes, Rich Leftists Should Deal with Feelings of Guilt by Giving Their Money to Me
I posted yesterday about the horrible unfairness of life (i.e., I’m not rich). Interestingly, there are a number of rich left-wingers that feel guilty about having a lot of money. In a burst of genius, I came up with an idea that will kill two birds with one stone….
Suddenly, I Like Soccer (at least When It Confirms Supply-Side Economics, Tax Competition, and the Laffer Curve)
I don’t particularly like soccer and I’m not normally a fan of the research of Professor Emannuel Saez, so it is rather surprising that I like Professor Saez’s new research on taxes and soccer. While Saez may have a reputation for doing work that often is used by…
Norquist Is Right and Coburn Is Wrong: Tax Increases Will Lead to More Spending, Not Lower Deficits
There’s a significant debate now taking place in Washington – largely behind closed doors, but sometimes covered by the media – on whether fiscal conservatives should maintain a rigid no-tax-increase position. One side of the debate features Grover Norquist of…
Republicans Are Right to Cut the IRS Budget
One of my many frustrations of working in Washington is dealing with perpetual-motion-machine assertions. The classic example is Keynesian economics, which is based on the notion that you magically create additional economic activity by having the government spend…