by Dan Mitchell | Dec 10, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Both the House and Senate have approved reasonably good tax reform plans. Lawmakers are now in a “conference committee” to iron out the differences between the two bills so that a consensus package can be a approved and sent to the White House for the President’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 4, 2017 | Blogs, Economics
The late Mancur Olsen was a very accomplished academic economist who described the unfortunate tendency of vote-seeking governments to behave like “stationary bandits,” seeking to extract the maximum amount of money from taxpayers. I’m not nearly as sophisticated, so...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 3, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
As part of yesterday’s column about the comparatively tiny – and temporary – tax cut in the Republican tax reform plan, I quoted a leftist columnist for US News & World Report, who argued that there should be a big tax increase (including a big tax hike on...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 2, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Since the House has passed a tax cut and the Senate has passed a tax cut, it’s quite likely that there will be a consensus deal that will be signed into law. Which makes me happy since any agreement presumably will include a lower corporate tax rate and...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 30, 2017 | Blogs, Taxation
I realize that we’re in the midst of an important tax battle in Washington and that I should probably be writing about likely amendments to the Senate tax bill. The bad Rubio-Lee proposal to increase refundable tax credits (i.e., redistribution spending that...