Tag Archives : Tax Competition
The OECD’s New Assault on Tax Competition Will Enable Higher Taxes and Bigger Government
Hardly anyone stands up for taxpayers. It’s the classic problem of concentrated interests and defused costs. Those who benefit from profligate government spending are strongly motivated to lobby for their pet handout. But every individual bit of waste only adds a tiny burden on any individual taxpayer, as the costs are spread out over the […]
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Center for Freedom and Prosperity Condemns New OECD Assault on Tax Competition and Fiscal Sovereignty
With the release of a new paper on “Addressing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting,” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) seeks to undermine global commerce by giving high-tax nations the right to tax business income earned in low-tax jurisdictions. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity strongly opposes this new OECD scheme.
read more...Grilled about Cayman Investments, Jack Lew Chooses the I’m-a-Moron Defense
Every so often, you get a “teaching moment” in Washington, and we now have an excellent opportunity to educate lawmakers about the “offshore” world because President Obama’s nominee to be Treasury Secretary has been caught with his hand in the tax haven cookie jar. Mr. Lew not only invested some of his own money in […]
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Marketplace Fairness Act Targets Domestic Tax Competition
Like so many bad ideas in Washington, the recently introduced “Marketplace Fairness Act” has bipartisan support. But there’s nothing fair about allowing states to reach outside their borders to tax businesses headquartered elsewhere. In fact, the bill’s broad expansion of state taxing authority is a direct assault on tax competition, federalism and, indeed, basic fairness. […]
read more...Another Hypocritical Leftist Caught with His Hand in the Tax-Haven Cookie Jar
I’m a huge fan of so-called tax havens. I’ve been working for more than 10 years to protect and promote the values of tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy. The bureaucrats at the OECD even threatened to have me tossed in a Mexican jail because I was advising representatives of low-tax jurisdictions on how […]
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US Relying on the Ignorance of Foreign Governments to Propel FATCA Fiscal Imperialism
I wrote recently about the need to draw a line in the sand on FATCA. Long story short, if current efforts to form an international tax cartel are not halted immediately, we can look forward to a future with a bleak economic outlook due to depressed worldwide investment, non-existent financial privacy for individuals and thus […]
read more...Just Because California Is Terrible, that Doesn’t Mean Texas Is Perfect
Texas is in much better shape than California. Taxes are lower, in part because Texas has no state income tax. No wonder the Lone Star State is growing faster and creating more jobs. And the gap will soon get even wider since California voters recently decided to drive away more productive people by raising top […]
read more...Do You Live in a “Death Spiral” State?
Three years ago, I put together a “Moocher Index” that measured the degree to which non-poor people in a state were benefiting from redistribution programs. As you can see if you click on the nearby table, Vermont was the worst state, followed by Mississippi, Maine, New York, and Massachusetts. I confessed that my Moocher Index […]
read more...Gerard Depardieu Meets John Galt
Another Frenchman has “gone Galt.” First, it was France’s richest entrepreneur. Now, it’s the nation’s most famous actor. Gerard Depardieu has officially announced – in a letter to France’s thuggish Prime Minister – that he is tired of paying 85 percent of his income to finance the vote-buying actions of France’s kleptocratic political elite. Instead, […]
read more...A Simple Lesson of Policy Diversity from “The Black Swan” Author: Don’t Put All Your Financial Eggs in One Regulatory Basket
Several months ago, I wrote a rather wonky post explaining that the western world became rich in large part because of jurisdictional competition. Citing historians, philosophers, economists, and other great thinkers, I explained that the rivalry made possible by decentralization and diversity played a big role in both economic and political liberalization. In other words, […]
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