I joked back in 2010 that Barack Obama had a very simple flat tax proposal. But as you can see, sometimes simple isn’t the same as good. Well, satire too often becomes reality in a world of greedy and corrupt politicians who think class-warfare is an acceptable guide to tax policy. I say this because […]
read more...I’m at Hillsdale College in Michigan for a conference on taxation. The event is called “The Federal Income Tax: A Centenary Consideration,” though I would have called it something like “100 Years of Misery from the IRS.” I’m glad to be here, both because Hillsdale proudly refuses to take government money (which would mean being […]
read more...In addition to being my former debating partner, Richard Epstein is one of America’s premiere public intellectuals. You can watch him make mincemeat out of George Soros in this video, for instance, and you can listen to his astute observations about his former law school colleague Barack Obama in this video. Given his stature, I’m […]
read more...In previous posts, I put together tutorials on the Laffer Curve, tax competition, and the economics of government spending. Today, we’re going to look at the issue of tax reform. The focus will be the flat tax, but this analysis applies equally to national sales tax systems such as the Fair Tax. There are three […]
read more...I appeared on CNBC a couple of days ago to discuss a new report which claims that some big U.S. companies “only” paid 9 percent of their income to the government. While I’m a bit skeptical of the numbers (did it include the taxes paid to foreign governments, for instance, which can be substantial for […]
read more...Alan Blinder has a distinguished resume. He’s a professor at Princeton and he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was interested to see he authored an attack on the flat tax – and I was happy after I read his column. Why? Well, because his arguments are rather weak. So anemic […]
read more...Governor Rick Perry of Texas has announced a plan, which he outlines in today’s Wall Street Journal, to replace the corrupt and inefficient internal revenue code with a flat tax. Let’s review his proposal, using the principles of good tax policy as a benchmark. 1. Does the plan have a low, flat rate to minimize […]
read more...I spoke at the Tea Party Patriots convention earlier today. Great people, great crowd. My job was to debate on the side of the flat tax over the fair tax. Several people asked for more information, and I promised to put this video on the blog. Long-time readers probably will have seen it before, but […]
read more...In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Clint Eastwood is asked about the new governor of California and uses the opportunity to advocate a simple and fair flat tax. “But I’ll tell you when I liked him—and I wasn’t a registered Democrat—but I liked him when he was running for president [in 1992] on […]
read more...Every since the current government won a landslide election, there’s been a widespread assumption that Hungary would be the next nation in Europe to hop on the flat tax bandwagon. Well, the assumption has become reality. Here’s a report from Tax-news.com.
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