In addition to several other tax increases, Senator Barack Obama wants to increase the Social Security payroll tax burden by imposing the tax on income above $250,000. This would be a sharp departure from current law, which only requires that the tax be imposed on the amount of income needed to “pay for” promised benefits. But more important, at least from an economic perspective, the Senator’s initiative would increase the top tax rate on productive behavior by as much as 12 percentage points – and this would be in addition to his proposal to kill the 2003 tax rate reductions and further boost the top rate by 4.6 percentage points.

The six-minute video explains the key features of the flat tax revolution and highlights the reforms in Hong Kong, Estonia, and Iceland. The flat tax revolution has been especially strong in former Soviet-bloc nations, a rather ironic development since a so-called progressive income tax was a key tenet of Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation brief video explains how the current tax system is deeply flawed and argues that either the flat tax or the national sales tax (sometimes known as the Fair Tax) would be a substantial improvement over the current internal revenue code. However, the video warns that a sales tax should only be adopted if the Constitution is amended to prevent politicians from imposing both an income tax and sales tax, similar to what happened in Europe.

Atleast 24 nations have adopted some form of single-rate tax regime. These reforms have generated impressive results, including faster growth, more jobs, and increased competitiveness. While politicians generally are most concerned about losing tax revenue, they should not worry. Flat tax systems oftentimes generate higher tax revenues because of more income and better compliance.

A mini-documentary by Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation that explains how international tax competition has led to better tax policy and better economic performance, but also warns that international bureaucracies are trying to rig the system against taxpayers by creating “an OPEC for politicians.”

The Prosperitas study by Bram de Bruin (Erasmus University, Rotterdam), originally prepared as a masters’ thesis and with assistance from the European Independent Institute (The Hague, The Netherlands) investigates the effect of labour income taxes on the supply of paid labour for several Western countries over the last two decades.

This video explains why the U.S. needs to cut its corporate tax rate to stay competitive with the rest of the world.

Market-oriented tax policy has played a key role in Iceland’s rebirth. Major tax reforms include slashing the corporate tax rate from 50 percent to 18 percent, abolition of the wealth tax, a low-rate 10 percent flat tax on capital income, and an intermediate-rate 36 percent flat tax on labor income. These supply-side reforms, along with policies such as privatization and deregulation, have yielded predictable results. Incomes are rising, unemployment is almost nonexistent, and the government is collecting more revenue from a larger tax b

America is one of the few nations to tax citizens who live and work abroad. Indeed, no other industrialized nation imposes a second layer of tax on its expatriates. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced legislation, the Working American Competitiveness Act (S. 3496), to eliminate the worldwide reach of the IRS. By creating a territorial system for labor income, the DeMint legislation will put American workers and U.S.-based multinationals on a level playing field with competitors from other nations. This is a welcome move, particularly since American expatriates were just hit with a tax hike.