I’ve been very critical of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Most recently, I criticized the Paris-based bureaucracy for making the rather remarkable assertion that a value-added tax would boost growth and employment. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The OECD has allied itself with the nutjobs from the so-called Occupy movement […]
read more...I’m not a fan of loopholes in the tax code. I’ve complained about the number of pages in the tax code, the number of provisions in the tax code, and I’ve even groused about the rising number of pages in the instruction manual for the 1040 tax form. And I’ve specifically come out against tax […]
read more...I’m a proponent of a pro-growth and non-corrupt tax code. I mostly write and talk about the flat tax, though I’d be happy to instead accept a national sales tax if we could somehow get rid of the 16th Amendment and replace it with something so ironclad that even Justices such as John Roberts and […]
read more...I’m at Hillsdale College in Michigan for a conference on taxation. The event is called “The Federal Income Tax: A Centenary Consideration,” though I would have called it something like “100 Years of Misery from the IRS.” I’m glad to be here, both because Hillsdale proudly refuses to take government money (which would mean being […]
read more...I’m not a big fan of the Internal Revenue Service, though I try to make sure that politicians get much of the blame for America’s convoluted, punitive, and unfair tax code. Heck, just look at these three images – here, here, and here – and you’ll find startling evidence that politicians make the tax system […]
read more...Washington is filled with debate and discussion about the economic burden of the federal income tax, which collected $1.13 trillion in FY2012 ($1.37 trillion if you include the corporate income tax). Yet politicians rarely consider the economic impact of payroll taxes, even though these levies totaled $.85 trillion during the same fiscal year. Yes, we […]
read more...I’m not sure I could pick out a significant victory for human freedom in 2012. Maybe I’m missing something, but the only good policy that’s even worth mentioning was the decision in Wisconsin to rein in the special privileges and excessive compensation for government workers. But there definitely have been lots of sad developments. The […]
read more...Back in September, I shared a very good primer on the capital gains tax from the folks at the Wall Street Journal, which explained why this form of double taxation is so destructive. I also posted some very good analysis from John Goodman about the issue. Unfortunately, even though the United States already has a […]
read more...Even though I knew some people would call me Scrooge, I wrote a few days ago about why we should get rid of the tax deduction for charitable contributions in exchange for lower tax rates. Simply stated, I’m a big advocate of fundamental tax reform, and I would like to scrap the corrupt internal revenue […]
read more...I used to think this image was a damning indictment of the internal revenue code. Or here’s another chart showing how the tax system has become more convoluted over time. But this new image may be the most effective of all of them. We don’t know what’s in the other 72,000 pages of tax code, […]
read more...