Regular readers know I’m not a fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Heck, just take a look at some of the examples in this post and you’ll understand why. Well, the Secretary-General of the Paris-based bureaucracy just pontificated about the value-added tax. Let’s see whether my knee-jerk hostility is warranted. Here is […]

I’m not a big fan of the International Monetary Fund, largely because the folks in charge oftentimes advocate toxic policies such as bailouts, higher taxes, and currency devaluation. But there are some top-rate economists working at the IMF, and the bureaucracy has published some good studies about the economic benefits of reducing government spending and […]

For years, I’ve been warning that a value-added tax (VAT) would be a terrible idea. Simply stated, politicians would have no reason to control spending or reform entitlements if they had a new source of tax revenue. In this video, I explain why this European-style national sales tax is a money machine for bigger government. […]

I’ve written before how “The Value-Added Tax Would Be a Money Machine for Big Government.” Writing for Bloomberg, Josh Barro has a piece entitled, “Value-Added Tax Would Raise Tons for U.S. Coffers.” So you might think we see eye to eye on this issue, but that would be a rash assumption. While I see a giant […]

What do the flat tax and national sales tax (and even the value-added tax) have in common? As I explain in this Senate Budget Committee testimony, they are all single-rate, consumption-base, loophole-free tax systems that fulfill the key principles of good tax policy. But good theory doesn’t operate in a vacuum, which is why I […]

In a recent column for the Wall Street Journal, I explained why Mitt Romney’s interest in a value-added tax is deeply troubling. One of my key points was that the VAT is a money machine for big government. But don’t believe me. Look at Japan, where the politicians see increases in the VAT as a […]

My Iowa caucus predictions from yesterday were hopelessly wrong, probably because I was picking with my heart rather than my head. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s openness to a value-added tax makes him a dangerously flawed candidate, and I hoped Iowa voters shared my concern. In a column for today’s […]

There’s been a lot of discussion about Mitt Romney’s appeal – or lack thereof – among supporters of limited government. To put it mildly, many libertarians and conservatives are underwhelmed by his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, his anemic list of proposed budget savings, and his reprehensible support for ethanol […]

I’ve written about the fiscal implosion in Europe and warned that America faces the same fate if we don’t reform poorly designed entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by an Italian student and former Cato Institute intern, may be the best explanation […]

The Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, is infamous for conveniently forgetting to pay tax on $80,000 of income and then getting kid-glove treatment from the IRS when his crime was uncovered. Not only did Geithner avoid even a slap on the wrist, he was confirmed to head the department that includes the IRS. So […]