Consumption Tax

Politicians don't like to talk about taxes except to brag about cutting them. But with California's widening budget deficit threatening deep cuts in education and other public services, it's difficult to avoid discussions about raising taxes.

Unfortunately, what's likely to be lost in the upcoming partisan melee over whether new taxes are needed to close the $16-billion gap is an equally important tax issue -- California's aging and often unfair tax system needs to be overhauled.

The goal of tax… more

California Lawmakers Want to Tax Downloads (Orange County Register)

Democrats would revise the definition of what's taxable instead of proposing a new tax that requires GOP support. . .

So what do you think will happen with downloads?

"You're just going to have a bigger use tax problem," admits Annette Nellen, a San Jose State tax professor who nonetheless supports taxing downloads.

Nellen likes the tax, in part, because increasing revenues isn't her biggest concern – rationale tax policy is. A… more

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

For more than 70 percent of American families, the payroll tax is the largest tax they pay. Yet the tax is regressive, inefficient, and insufficient to fund the programs it finances. As a 15.3 percent wage tax levied on employers and employees, it deters job creation and depresses wages at the low end of… more

The greatest challenge in politics is to understand when a political era is closing and the door to a new one is ready to be opened. Thirty years ago, a small band of conservatives understood that what they called the era of “tax and spend” -- in which government grew inexorably on a tide of invisible tax increases through Republican and Democratic administrations -- was ready to be challenged.

In 1977, Rep. Jack Kemp and Sen. Bill Roth introduced a bill… more

Will 2007 be the year of fundamental tax reform? It should be, but in all likelihood, it will not be. Still, there are plenty of changes that could be made to move the tax code in the right direction.

First, the reasons there should be tax reform. Everybody hates the tax code. There is no better political rallying cry than "I am going to reform the tax code to make it simpler, fairer, and better for the economy." The same… more

Summary of Remarks

The second panel of the Real State of the Union, "Rethinking Domestic Policy" was moderated by Morton Mondracke, executive editor of Roll Call. The discussion focused on fundamental problems at the core of American domestic policy, including asset management, health care, and improving standards for all Americans.

Ray Boshara, Director of New America's Asset Building Program, led off the discussion by focusing on the "ownership society." Mr. Boshara defined the current economic social status in the United States as… more

President Bush's proposed budget blurs the important distinctions between stimulus and growth. Given the differing objectives of the two -- on the one hand increasing spending to stimulate the economy in the short term and on the other increasing saving to boost longer-term growth -- it is nearly impossible to accomplish both.

With the stimulus and growth components of the president's economic proposals canceling each other out, the budget plan is likely to accomplish neither.

When stimulus is the objective,… more

Should death be taxed? Congressional supporters claim that this is the issue that was at the core of the failed legislation to repeal estate and gift taxes. Certainly this … more