Category Archives

Archive of posts published in the category: Taxes

Cherry Picking Tax Policies

from Kevin Williamson at National Review, The U.S. Is Not the Highest-Taxed Nation in the World The problem for the Left is that Democrats cannot, under most circumstances, tell the truth about U.S. taxes, either, because the American middle class does

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Statutory vs Actual Tax Rates

from Kevin Williamson at National Review, The U.S. Is Not the Highest-Taxed Nation in the World We do have an extraordinarily high top corporate-tax rate — on paper, anyway. Our statutory top corporate rate is among the highest in the world,

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The Need for Permanence in the Tax Code

from The WSJ, Phil Gramm and Michael Salon, Reagan Cut Taxes, Revenue Boomed:  As inflation plummeted from the CBO’s projected average annual rate of 8.3% for 1982-86 to an average of 3.8%, revenue compared with projections tumbled $22 billion in 1982

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Addicted to the Devil

from Thomas Donlan at Barron’s, What Went Wrong in Kansas Americans want government like they want services generally: “faster, better, and cheaper.” But economists know there’s a problem: The optimistic ones say, “Pick any two”; the pessimists say, “Choose one.”

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Tax Psychotherapy

Another gem  from Kevin Williamson at National Review, Bad Medicine on ‘Carried Interest’ Nobody in Washington wants to face that particular angry mob of IRA investors with torches and pitchforks. What we are talking about is singling out a particular

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A Better Way to Tax the Rich

Some advice for the new president from economist John Cochrane in the Wall Street Journal, Don’t Believe the Economic Pessimists: The ideal tax system raises revenue for the government while distorting economic decisions as little as possible. A pure tax

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The Cost of a High Estate Tax

From The NYT and economist Greg Mankiw,  Why Taxing Fairly Means Not Taxing Inheritances: Excerpt: But there is one thing that everyone can agree on: The estate tax you owe should not depend substantially on the exact moment you happen

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Violating Horizontal Equity

From The NYT and economist Greg Mankiw,  Why Taxing Fairly Means Not Taxing Inheritances: Excerpt: From my perspective, the estate tax is a bad way to tax the rich because it violates a principle that economists call horizontal equity. The

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The Loss of American Competitiveness

from The Great Degeneration by Niall Ferguson Experts on economic competitiveness, like Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, define the term to include the ability of government to pass effective laws; the protection of physical and intellectual property rights and lack of

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A Hard Shift Left

from The Wall Street Journal, Fred Barnes writes The No-Growth Democratic Party In 1997 President Bill Clinton signed the Taxpayer Relief Act, cutting the tax rate on capital gains to 20% from 28%. Senate Democrats voted 37-8 in favor of the bill.

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Jaded at Tax Reform

From Robert Samuelson at The Washington Post, The coming middle-class tax increase There is a broader message here. Both parties have constructed rationales for avoiding middle-class tax increases, which would be highly unpopular. It’s not that these rationales are illegitimate: The

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Driving Corporations Overseas

from the Wall Street Journal, The Corporate Tax Political Divide  ‘Why is the tax code making it better for foreign companies to invest in the United States than U.S. companies?” That was the pungent question posed by Pfizer Chairman and CEO Ian Read in an

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Separate the Tax Code and The Subsidy Code

From John Cochrane at The Grumpy Economist, Economic Growth This is part of a 10,000 word essay that is worth every second of the time it takes to read. The central goal of a growth-oriented tax system is to raise

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Inert Blocks of Wood

From Thomas Sowell at National Review, What Democrats Mean by ‘Paying Your Fair Share’ Whether in politics or in the media, words are increasingly used, not to convey facts or even allegations of facts, but simply to arouse emotions. Undefined

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Pretending to Balance the Budget

from Kevin Williamson at National Review, We’re Not That Far from a Balanced Budget One, Americans earning $100,000 or more pay basically all of the federal income taxes, about 80 percent. That is far in excess of their portion of

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A Low Information President

From The Washington Times, Lewis Uhler and Peter Ferrara write The rich pay more than their fair share. Excerpts: The latest CBO report shows that the top 20% of income earners pay 70% of all federal taxes, while earning just over 50% of before

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The Gini Distortion

In The Wall Street Journal Phil Gramm and Michael Solon write How to Distort Income Inequality- The Piketty-Saez data ignore changes in tax law and fail to count noncash compensation and Social Security benefits. excerpt: An equally extraordinary distortion in the

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A Parabolic Tax Curve

From Mark Perry at his AEI- Carpe Diem Blog, Top 400 taxpayers paid almost as much in federal income taxes in 2010 as the entire bottom 50% Early last year Obama reiterated his belief that the wealthiest Americans still aren’t paying

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Inequality and The Tax Reform of 1986

In The Wall Street Journal Phil Gramm and Michael Solon write How to Distort Income Inequality- The Piketty-Saez data ignore changes in tax law and fail to count noncash compensation and Social Security benefits. excerpt: Messrs. Piketty and Saez also did

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Inequality and The Missing Data

In The Wall Street Journal Phil Gramm and Michael Solon write How to Distort Income Inequality- The Piketty-Saez data ignore changes in tax law and fail to count noncash compensation and Social Security benefits. excerpt: The chosen starting point for

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