I have a question for my friends who support a national sales tax. First, some background. Beginning with the defeat of Woody Jenkins in his Louisiana Senate race back in the 1990s, various versions of the national sales tax have caused political headaches for GOP candidates. Even candidates from conservative states, such as Sen. DeMint in […]

Richard Rahn’s Washington Times column makes several key points about corporate taxation, including the fact that excessive taxation of capital (the corporate income tax being just one example) is extremely foolish such taxes impose the most damage – per dollar collected – when compared with other forms of revenue. To add injury to injury, the […]

We’ve looked at this issue before, but this new CNN article fleshes out the awful IRS rules in the new healthcare bill: The massive expansion of requirements for businesses to file 1099 tax forms that was hidden in the 2,409-page health reform bill took many by surprise when it came to light last month. …The […]

I feel like a broken record when I write about European fiscal policy. In almost all cases, I cite OECD data showing that countries are in fiscal trouble because of excessive spending rather than inadequate tax revenue. I then show that the politicians are using the spending-caused crisis as an excuse to raise taxes even […]

Here’s some more good polling data from the Resurgent Republic website. All demographic groups, including Democrats, agree that excessive pay for federal bureaucrats is a bad thing. Maybe, just maybe, this means the productive people in society are fed up and will successfully fight back: Voters think higher average pay and benefit packages for federal […]

Okay, the title of this post is an absurd exaggeration, but I am not optimistic about the future of the United Kingdom. Government spending has exploded over the last ten-plus years (the largest expansion in the burden of government spending among developed nations), and this unsurprisingly has led to punitive class-warfare policies. I saved this […]

Kevin Williamson has a long-overdue piece in National Review making two essential points about supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve. First, he explains that tax cuts are not the fiscal equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. Simply stated, too many Republicans have fallen into very sloppy habits. They oftentimes fail to understand the difference between […]

The New York Times has an article describing widespread tax evasion in Greece, along with an implication that the country’s fiscal crisis is largely the result of unpaid taxes and could be mostly solved if taxpayers were more obedient to the state. This is an grossly inaccurate. A quick look at the budget numbers reveals […]

I blogged a cartoon joking about Obamacare as a Trojan Horse for the IRS, but with each passing day we are learning new – and always unpleasant – details about the mammoth legislation that was imposed by the left. The excerpt below from the Boston Globe reveals that businesses will face costly new reporting requirements […]

The President had another “spread the wealth” slip of the tongue the other day, this time remarking that “at some point you have made enough money.” Some have commented that this exposes Obama’s anti-capitalist ideology, and others have correctly noted that the government should have no role in determining the “right” level of income. But […]