by Dan Mitchell | Sep 28, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Financial Privacy, Regulations, Taxation
Earlier this year, President Obama’s IRS proposed a regulation that would force banks in America to report any interest they pay to accounts owned by non-resident aliens (that’s the technical term for foreigners who don’t live in the U.S.). What made this regulation...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 27, 2011 | Blogs, Taxation
Having grown up during the Cold War, I never though I would write a sentence like the title of this blog post, but there have been lots of firsts during the reign of Obama. When the head of a major multinational company says the American tax system is worse than the...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 26, 2011 | Blogs, Capital Gains, Economics, Taxation
Whether I’m criticizing Warren Buffett’s innumeracy or explaining how to identify illegitimate loopholes, I frequently write about the perverse impact of double taxation. By this, I mean the tendency of politicians to impose multiple layers of taxation on income that...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 25, 2011 | Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, Taxation
I became a big admirer of Herman Cain back in the 1990s when he was a member of the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (aka, the Kemp Commission). I worked as a staffer for the Commission and was able to observe Mr. Cain in action over a period of...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 25, 2011 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Have you ever wondered why the tax code is a Byzantine mess that requires 72,000 pages of law and regulation? Hopefully you don’t ponder such dark and dreary thoughts, but the answer is that politicians and lobbyists have spent nearly 100 years creating all sorts of...