I’ve written several times about a proposed IRS regulation that would force American banks to put foreign law above U.S. law. I’ve repeatedly warned that the scheme, which would force financial institutions to report the deposit interest they pay to foreigners, is bad economic policy, bad regulatory policy, and bad banking policy. My arguments have […]

I’m not a big fan of Mitt Romney. I hammered him the day before Christmas for being open to a value-added tax, and criticized him in previous posts for his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, his anemic list of proposed budget savings, and his reprehensible support for ethanol subsidies. But I also believe […]

I’m glad that China has taken some steps away from communism. According to Economic Freedom of the World, China was one of 10-worst nations for economic liberty back in 1980 and they’ve since climbed to 92nd place out of 141 nations. I’ve even offered a small bit of praise for China’s shift to a more […]

I’m periodically asked about proposals to impose “small” taxes on transactions. There are a couple of versions of this idea. In some cases, such proposals are designed to tax every economic transaction and supposedly generate enough money to replace all other taxes. In recent years, though, I’m usually asked about levying a “Tobin Tax,” which […]

I recently commented on some astounding numbers showing that each regulatory bureaucrat destroys 100 jobs in the productive sector of the economy. That’s obviously terrible news. Heck, it would be awful if each bureaucrat caused the destruction of 2 private-sector jobs. But here are some excerpts from a John Stossel column about how the bureaucrats […]

Most of us are aware that America has a punitive corporate tax system, but here’s a sobering bit of analysis. Corporations pay more money to governments than they do to their shareholders. Here’s a chart from a recent Tax Foundation analysis. Now here’s something even more important to understand. Corporations don’t actually pay all those […]

Last year, I reported on a study from the Small Business Administration that estimated that federal regulation costs the economy a staggering $1.75 trillion every year. But that number is so large that it’s hard to understand what it actually means, so let’s look at some new research to better understand the impact of red […]

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 […]

The folks from the Koch Institute put together a great video a couple of months ago looking at why some nations are rich and others are poor. That video looked at the relationship between economic freedom and various indices that measure quality of life. Not surprisingly, free markets and small government lead to better results. […]

Having grown up during the Cold War, I never though I would write a sentence like the title of this blog post, but there have been lots of firsts during the reign of Obama. When the head of a major multinational company says the American tax system is worse than the policy of a nation […]