The politicians are urging big taxes on banks, using rhetoric designed to trick people into thinking that this is a way to make the banks pay for their own bailouts. But a general tax on all banks simply means that well-run banks subsidize the reckless banks – a problem that may get worse over time […]

His article doesn’t completely slam the door on a value-added tax, but Robert Samuleson’s piece in the Washington Post does highlight some of the very serious problems with a VAT – including more government spending, burdens on families, additional complexity, and more corruption: Almost every pro-VAT argument is exaggerated, misleading, incomplete or wrong. The VAT […]

The New York Times ran an article this week about an increasing number of Americans living and working abroad who are considering taking the drastic step of giving up their American citizenship.  Most of these expats would ideally like to maintain their citzenship but are being pressured to relinquish it by America’s complicated tax code and system […]

Tax-news.com reports that the French and Italian governments want Europe to impose a tax on imports from nations that don’t adopt misguided climate-change/global-warming rules. This is awful policy, but the good news is that such a policy presumably won’t happen unless all 27 European Union nations agree: France and Italy have demanded that the European […]

Being an American citizen is an honor in many ways, but it is a huge millstone around the neck for highly successful investors and entrepreneurs because of an oppressive and complex tax system. This is particularly true for those based in and/or competing in global markets. Indeed, because the tax system (and regulatory system) is […]

The serial mendacity that characterizes Washington is on full display in David Border’s column entitled “Without higher taxes, the national debt will be crushing.” Yes, this is the same David Broder who did not write columns about the threat of deficits and debt when politicians were bailing out their friends on Wall Street. Moreover, this […]

A former White House speechwriter, Mark Thiessen, has jumped to the defense of his former boss, writing for the Washington Post that George W. Bush “established a conservative record without parallel.” Even by the loose standards of Washington, that is a jaw-dropping assertion. I’ve been explaining for years that Bush was a big-government advocate, even writing […]

Caroline Baum of Bloomberg has a good column against the value-added tax, in part because she quotes me, but more so because she effectively explains that a national sales tax like the VAT would be an add-on tax that would finance much bigger government:  As Americans awake to the 2009 tax-filing deadline today, they can […]

 Clemson University was a big rival when I was at the University of Georgia, so it seems natural that I am locking horns with someone from that school as we debate whether we should have a flat tax or the current system. You can see both arguments at this link, and there also is a […]

I have a column in the Washington Times speculating on ways we could lower our tax bills if we could use the same creative accounting that the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation used to help impose Obamacare on the nation: If you’re still struggling over your tax return, wondering why you pay […]