President Obama promised he would unite the world…and he’s right. Representatives from dozens of nations have bitterly complained about an awful piece of legislation, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that was enacted back in 2010. They despise…
Daily Analysis
America Is a Tax Haven…and That’s a Very Good Thing
I like tax havens for the simple reason that we need some ways of restraining the greed of the political class. Simply stated, if profligate politicians think that we are “captive customers,” they are much more likely to impose (even) higher tax rates (as we’ve seen…
Latest Delay Exposes FATCA’s Fatal Flaws
Since its passage in 2010, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act has been delayed multiple times. Most recently the Treasury Department has pushed back 6 months the beginning of FATCA’s withholding penalty for noncompliant institutions, from January 1, 2014 to…
Wall Street Journal Condemns OECD Proposal to Increase Business Fiscal Burdens with Global Tax Cartel
What’s the biggest fiscal problem facing the developed world? To an objective observer, the answer is a rising burden of government spending, caused by poorly designed entitlement programs, growing levels of dependency, and unfavorable demographics. The combination of…
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Blasts FATCA
Few know better than Americans living overseas the punitive and capricious nature of U.S. tax policy. Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, law professor and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Colleen Graffy provided a clear and concise accounting of…
Debating Tax Havens
I never thought I would wind up in Costco’s monthly magazine, but I was asked to take part in a pro-con debate on “Should offshore tax havens be illegal?” Given my fervent (and sometimes risky) support of tax competition, financial privacy, and fiscal sovereignty,…
Can You Spell L-A-F-F-E-R C-U-R-V-E?
I’m thinking of inventing a game, sort of a fiscal version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Only the way it will work is that there will be a map of the world and the winner will be the blindfolded person who puts their pin closest to a nation such as Australia or…
America’s Corporate Tax System Ranks a Miserable 94 out of 100 Nations in “Tax Attractiveness”
I’ve relentlessly complained that the United States has the highest corporate tax rate among all developed nations. And if you look at all the world’s countries, our status is still very dismal. According to the the Economist, we have the second highest corporate tax…
Final Score: Dwight Howard 8,000,000 – Jerry Brown 0
feel sorry for the people of California. They’re in a state that faces a very bleak future. And why does the Golden State have a not-so-golden outlook? Because interest groups have effective control of state and local political systems and they use their power to…
Tax Havens Are Good for High-Tax Nations
Regular readers know that one of my main goals is to preserve and promote tax competition as a means of restraining the greed of the political class. Heck, I almost wound up in a Mexican jail because of my work defending low-tax jurisdictions. As you can imagine, it’s…