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.

This concluding video in the series on the Laffer Curve explains how the Joint Committee on Taxation’s revenue-estimating process is based on the absurd theory that changes in tax policy – even dramatic reforms such as a flat tax – do not effect economic growth. In other words, the current system assumes the Laffer Curve does not exist. Because of congressional budget rules, this leads to a bias for tax increases and against tax cuts. The video explains that “static scoring” should be replaced with “dynamic scoring” so that lawmakers will have more accurate information when making decisions about tax policy.

This video reviews real-world evidence showing that changes in marginal tax rates can have a significant impact on taxable income, thus leading to substantial amounts of revenue feedback. In a few cases, tax-rate reductions even “pay for themselves,” though the key lesson is the more modest point that pro-growth changes in tax policy will have a positive impact on economic performance and that good tax cuts therefore do not “cost” the government much in terms of foregone tax revenue.

The Laffer Curve charts a relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. While the theory behind the Laffer Curve is widely accepted, the concept has become very controversial because politicians on both sides of the debate exaggerate. This video shows the middle ground between those who claim “all tax cuts pay for themselves” and those who claim tax policy has no impact on economic performance. This video, focusing on the theory of the Laffer Curve, is Part I of a three-part series.

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.”

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