Taxes, Taxes, Taxes
Here are some good resources on taxes:
1) Freedomworks has a new site, Scrap the Code, highlighting the flaws in the complex tax code, and calling for a simpler tax structure. One of the most interesting facts was that the IRS gets tax law wrong about 10% of the time. I know, 90% correct is a decent score for students (a high 'B' when I went to school), but imagine if the teachers only had 90% of the correct answers.
2) Cato-at-Liberty presents some of the latest CBO data on the effective federal tax rates (this includes federal payroll taxes and business taxes). Specifically, the top fifth of households in terms of income pay about 26% of their income in federal taxes, while the bottom fifth pay about 4%; the overall average is about 20.7% (note that state and local taxes consume another 10% or so).
3) The Tax Foundation's Joe Henchman recent presented at the University of Pittsburgh on why film tax credits are poor policy. His reasoning - they cost money, they don't grow the economy, and they lead to censorship - are outlined on the Tax Foundation blog.
4) The Cato Institute has a new video on the Tax Code.
1 comment:
This is a thinly veiled promotion of the flat tax. Swing and a miss.
Dan Mitchell falsely states that the flat tax and the fair tax are different sides of the same coin. THAT IS FALSE.
FIRST, The flat tax is a system of taxation based on income. ANY SYSTEM OF TAXATION BASED ON INCOME will require us to divulge an unacceptable amount of personal information: our employer, our salary, our gains from investments, our mortgage banker, etc. The Federal Government was NEVER supposed to be possessed of this information. Read the 4th Amendment which is often thought of as protecting the accused in a criminal prosecution. I think the intent was much broader. Read it and understand that we were NEVER supposed to "voluntarily" divulge personal information to the government.
SECOND, Dan Mitchell is an expert on efforts to "harmonize" international taxation. Certainly he must realize that ONLY AN ANONYMOUS CONSUMPTION BASED SYSTEM OF TAXATION will thwart the efforts of the globalists to hunt and track down every citizen of every nation and tax them according to their country of citizenship; essentially taxing individuals based on the accident of their birth in a high tax jurisdiction. Dan, you're better than this.
THIRD, Any income based system of taxation will in all probability give the government the authority to reach into the paycheck of every working American, to confiscate that portion the government deems legal, before the individual has tithed, taken care of his/her family or saved a penny for retirement. In essence, we are slaves to the government and allowed to keep only that portion of our earnings the government permits us to have. WE MUST END ALL WITHHOLDING.
Only and anonymous system of consumption based taxation like the FAIR TAX will restore financial privacy, thwart the efforts of international taxation junkies, and place the CITIZENS in full control of the fruits of the labor.
The flat tax and the Fair Tax are not equivalent. Only the Fair Tax restores liberty. The flat income tax is slavery under a different name.
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