Why is Harris proposing such a destructive policy?

Four guiding principles for the elimination of tax loopholes and the creation of a neutral tax system.

Poor marks for the U.S. tax code, bad anti-“tax haven” legislation in Maine, and tax competition lessons for European nations.

I have a handful of simple rules for good tax policy. Keep government small, since it’s impossible to have a reasonable tax system with a bloated welfare state. Keep tax rates low to minimize penalties against income, production, and wealth creation. Since capital formation is critical for long-run growth, don’t double-tax income that is saved […]

Leftists want higher tax rates and they want greater tax compliance. But they have a hard time understanding that those goals are inconsistent. Simply stated, people respond to incentives. When tax rates are punitive, folks earn and report less taxable income, and vice-versa. When tax rates increase, sometimes they engage in tax avoidance, lowering their […]

Read it and weep. Or maybe I should say look at it and weep. I suppose this is a good time to recycle my flat tax video. I don’t mention this in the video, but Hong Kong’s flat tax system, which has been around for more than 60 years, requires less than 200 pages. Slovakia’s […]

Happy Tax Day! Or, if you’re like me, happy tax extension filing day. In the past couple of days, I’ve posted about the benefits of a better tax system and the unfairness of the current system. Those were compelling posts, at least I hope. But now let’s tie these themes together. Art Laffer has a […]

One of my many frustrations of working in Washington is dealing with perpetual-motion-machine assertions. The classic example is Keynesian economics, which is based on the notion that you magically create additional economic activity by having the government spend money instead of allowing the private sector to decide how it gets spent (in an especially bizarre […]

The IRS certainly deserves lots of condemnation for its rogue actions, including a $200 fine for a taxpayer who supposedly underpaid his tax bill by 4 pennies. But the tax-collection agency also should be criticized for blundering incompetence. In the past, I’ve mocked the Internal Revenue Service for sending checks to convicts. Now it’s time […]