News
Politico | 5 questions for tax inspector general J. Russell George
A House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service scandal will give Democrats an opportunity to slam the Treasury inspector general, who helped fuel anger at the agency after releasing a report in May that described unfair scrutiny being applied to tea party groups.
Econ Comments & Analysis
WSJ | A Special Tax Misery for Americans Living Abroad
Beware the sledgehammer used to crack the nut. In this case, the nut is the U.S. government's laudable goal of catching tax evaders. The sledgehammer is the overreaching effect of legislation that is alienating other countries and resulting in millions of U.S. citizens abroad being forced to either painfully reconsider their nationality, or face a lifetime of onerous bureaucracy, expense and privacy invasion.
USA Today | Arthur B. Laffer: Collect more sales taxes
Lawmakers need to come to grips with our subpar economic performance and enact reforms to jumpstart growth. Real annual economic growth between 1960 and 1999 was 3.5%. Since 2000, it has been 2.2%. As a result, we are 15% poorer than we would have been if growth had remained steady. That means more poverty and budget problems in state capitals and Washington.
NBER | No Taxation without Information: Deterrence and Self-Enforcement in the Value Added Tax
Tax evasion generates billions of dollars of losses in government revenue and creates large distortions, especially in developing countries. Claims that the VAT facilitates tax enforcement by generating paper trails on transactions between firms have contributed to widespread VAT adoption worldwide, but there is little empirical evidence about this mechanism.
