by Dan Mitchell | Feb 19, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation
The worst-international-bureaucracy contest is heating up. In recent years, the prize has belonged to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for reasons outlined in this interview. Indeed, I’ve even argued that subsidies for the OECD are...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 26, 2018 | Blogs, Health Care, Taxation
I don’t like it when voters support tax increases. Needless to say, voters rarely if ever vote to raise their own taxes. Instead, they get seduced into robbing their neighbors in exchange for the promise of new goodies from politicians. Regardless, it’s still very...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 18, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
Here are three things I’ve written about tax policy. See if you can detect a pattern: I’ve written that I don’t want a value-added tax because the money would be used to finance bigger government. I’ve also explained I don’t want a carbon tax because the revenue from...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 23, 2017 | Blogs, Taxation, VAT
I never saw The Nightmare Before Christmas, a 1993 film. But that’s fine, because I am already dealing with my own nightmare with the holiday just around the corner. What’s haunting me is the specter of a value-added tax, which some reporters now think is a clear and...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Greece has confirmed that a nation can spend itself into a fiscal crisis. And the Greek experience also has confirmed that bailouts exacerbate a fiscal crisis by enabling more bad policy, while also rewarding spendthrift politicians and reckless lenders (as I...