by Dan Mitchell | Dec 22, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
It’s not easy being a libertarian, particularly if you follow public policy. Thomas Jefferson almost certainly was right when he wrote that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” Heck, just look at how small government...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 6, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, VAT
It’s no secret that I dislike the value-added tax. But this isn’t because of its design. The VAT, after all, would be (presumably) a single-rate, consumption-based system, just like the flat tax and national sales tax. And that’s a much less destructive way of raising...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 23, 2013 | Blogs, Taxation
One of my missions in life is fundamental tax reform. I would like to replace the corrupt internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax. Though what I really want is a tax system that minimizes the damage of extracting money from the productive sector of the...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 10, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Even though I’m a big fan of tax reform, I explained back in June that I’m not very comfortable with the “blank slate” tax reform plan put forth by Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT). My main gripe is that they start with the assumption that there...
by Dan Mitchell | May 30, 2013 | Blogs, Taxation
As a long-time advocate of tax reform, I’m not a fan of distortionary loopholes in the tax code. Ideally, we would junk the 74,000-page internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax – meaning one low rate, no double taxation, and no favoritism.*...
