Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative Education Fund, recently wrote to the Baltimore Sun to stick up for Maryland’s sin taxes. He seems to view it as the obligation of government to reduce activities it determines to be…
Daily Analysis
What’s the Ideal Point on the Laffer Curve?
There’s been a bit of chatter in the blogosphere about a recent post on Ezra Klein’s blog featuring estimates from various economists about the revenue-maximizing tax rate. It won’t come as a surprise that people on the right tended to give lower estimates and folks…
Choosing the Flat Tax over the Fair Tax
After my recent post on “bashing the IRS,” I got several emails and comments asking whether a national sales tax might be a better idea than the flat tax. I’m a big fan of proposals such as the Fair Tax. I’ve debated in favor of the national sales tax, done media…
Bush was the Biggest Tax Collector in History, But an Even Bigger Spender
Bill Frezza of Adams Capital Management writes at RealClearMarkets to debunk claims that the current deficit is due to a lack of tax revenue, rather than excessive spending. Using IRS data, he shows how revenues from the rich – as well as the effective tax rate…
Letter from Cayman Finance Exposes Senator Levin’s Fallacies
Recently, I chastised Senator Levin for his assault on so-called “tax havens,” pointing out that Levin’s agenda would fail to benefit small businesses, but instead “place U.S. corporations at a competitive disadvantage in the international marketplace.” Since…
Coalition for Tax Competition Responds to the FATCA Mess
Congress wants to reduce tax evasion, but politicians are unwilling to address the underlying problem of low tax rates, so they continuously give the IRS more power and make it more difficult for law-abiding people to engage in commerce. A good example is the FATCA…
Time for Some IRS Bashing
Being a lazy procrastinator, I filed an extension April 15 and then waited until this weekend to do my tax return. This experience has reinforced my hatred and disdain for our corrupt and punitive tax system. I don’t even have a remotely complicated tax return, just a…
When Keynesians Attack, Part II
I’m still dealing with the statist echo chamber, having been hit with two additional attacks for the supposed sin of endorsing Reaganomics over Obamanomics (my responses to the other attacks can be found here and here). Some guy at the Atlantic Monthly named Steve…
When Soaking The Rich Doesn't Sell, Soak The Super-Rich Instead
With the public unconvinced of the wisdom of soaking the rich, the latest hot idea floating around in statist circles is not to soak the rich, but rather the really, super-duper, ultra rich. In a class-warfare filled screed, James Surowiecki wrote in the New Yorker on…
The Destructive Economics of Class-Warfare Taxation
Caroline Baum of Bloomberg has an excellent column explaining why soak-the-rich taxes don’t work. Simply stated, wealthy people are not like you and me. They have tremendous control over the timing, composition, and level of their income. When the rich are hit with…