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,…
Daily Analysis
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…
Some Much-Needed Remedial Public Finance Economics for David Cameron and other Statists
In a recent interview with the BBC, I basically accused UK Prime Minister David Cameron of being a feckless and clueless demagogue who is engaged in a desperate effort to resuscitate his political future. I shouldn’t have been so kind. Cameron manages to combine bad…
Can the David of Swiss Human Rights Withstand the Goliath of IRS Extraterritorial Tax Enforcement?
Because we live in an upside-down world, Switzerland is being persecuted for being a productive, peaceful nation that has a strong human rights policy with regards to privacy. More specifically, politicians from high-tax nations resent the fact that investors flock to…
Defending Tax Havens
It goes without saying that I’m always ready to defend tax havens when statists are seeking to undermine tax competition, financial privacy, and fiscal sovereignty. So when the BBC asked if I would debate the topic, I said yes even though I’m in Paris (where…
The Tax Foundation 1 – New York Times 0
Whether it’s American politicians trying to extort more taxes from Apple or international bureaucrats trying to boost the tax burden on firms with a global corporate tax return, the left is aggressively seeking to impose harsher fiscal burdens on the business…
Rand Paul Debunks the Shameful Demagoguery against Apple
Senator Rand Paul is perhaps even better than I thought he would be. He already is playing a very substantive role on policy, ranging from his actions of big-picture issues, such as his proposed budget that would significantly shrink the burden of government…