We often look at how tax competition affects nations, but the same concept applies to U.S. states as well. Two recent reports demonstrate what happens when politicians fail to understand just how tax competition works. In a report from the Maine Heritage Policy Center, we see how New Hampshire’s low retail tax rate is attracting […]

There hasn’t been much good economic news in recent years, but one bright spot for the economy is that the United States is a haven for foreign investors and this has helped attract more than $10 trillion to American capital markets according to Commerce Department data. These funds are hugely important for the health of […]

I’m not a big fan of the IRS, but usually I blame politicians for America’s corrupt, unfair, and punitive tax system. Sometimes, though, the tax bureaucrats run amok and earn their reputation as America’s most despised bureaucracy. Here’s an example. Earlier this year, the Internal Revenue Service proposed a regulation that would force American banks […]

Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University is a big booster of the discredited notion that foreign aid is a cure-all for poverty in the developing world, but he is now branching out and saying silly things about policy in other areas. In a column for the Financial Times, he complains that tax competition is forcing governments […]

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of tax competition because politicians are less likely to misbehave if the potential victims of plunder have the ability to escape across borders. Here is an excerpt from a superb article by Allister Heath, one of the U.K.’s best writers on economic and business issues. In a […]

I don’t particularly like soccer and I’m not normally a fan of the research of Professor Emannuel Saez, so it is rather surprising that I like Professor Saez’s new research on taxes and soccer. While Saez may have a reputation for doing work that often is used by advocates of class warfare, his latest research […]

Here’s a new mini-documentary from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by Natasha Montague of Americans for Tax Reform, that explains why the process of tax competition is a critical constraint on the propensity of governments to over-tax and over-spend. The issue is very simple. When labor and capital have the ability to escape […]

The latest “Economics 101” video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) features Natasha Montague of Americans for Tax Reform explaining the benefit to people and economies when governments compete through tax policy. The video, entitled “Tax Competition: A Powerful Force to Restrain Big Government,” shows why public policy is much better when governments have to compete for jobs and investment.

Hello from the Most Serene Republic of San Marino, a 24-square mile enclave centered around Monte Titano in eastern Italy. I’m here for a conference on “Competition and Alliances among States.” Like many other so-called tax havens, San Marino has been bludgeoned in recent years by politicians from high-tax nations, who resent the flow of […]

There’s a supposed expose in the U.K.-based Daily Mail about how major British companies have subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions. It even includes this table with the ostensibly shocking numbers. This is quite akin to the propaganda issued by American statists. Here’s a table from a report issued by a left-wing group that calls itself “Business […]