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Taxes, Abortion, and Extraterritoriality
I’m a big fan of tax competition. Why? Because if they’re not constrained by the fear that taxpayers can escape, I worry that short-sighted politicians (i.e., “stationary bandits“), will over-tax and...
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Learning from Andorra’s Tax System
As a fan of sensible tax policy and tax competition, I could not resist the opportunity to visit Andorra on my current trip to Europe (as part of the Free Market Road Show). Here’s a chart that will...
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Lessons from Spanish Federalism
I’m a big fan of federalism. It gives people more freedom to choose the type of economic policy they prefer. A system of federalism promotes jurisdictional competition and policy innovation....
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Switzerland, Decentralization, and Tax Competition
There are many reasons to admire Switzerland. The nation’s very effective spending cap. The nation’s libertarian-leaning governance. The nation’s system of private pensions. The nation’s genuine...
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The Feel-Good Map of 2022
I’ve already shared the “feel-good story” for 2022, so today I’m going to share this year’s feel-good map. Courtesy of the Tax Foundation, here are the states that have lowered personal income tax...
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Deconstructing Biden’s Corporate Tax Cartel, Part III
As part of my continuing efforts to derail Biden’s global minimum tax on businesses (here’s Part I and Part II), I explain the downsides of the president’s plan in this clip from a recent interview. If...
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Attract the Best and the Brightest with Low Tax Rates
I’ve written many times about the importance of low tax rates, specifically low marginal tax rates on productive activity such as work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. And I’ve explained that...
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In a Tweet, Everything You Need to Know about Taxes and Incentives
A big division among economists is whether taxes have a big or small impact on incentives. If taxpayers are very responsive, that means more economic damage (to use the profession’s jargon, a greater...
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An Overdue Wake-Up Call for New York Democrats?
The economic outlook in New York (both the state and the city) has been very depressing in recent years. New York is ranked #50 in the Economic Freedom of North America. New York is ranked #48 in the...
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Another Victory for Tax Competition
I’m a big fan of tax competition. Why? Because politicians are far more likely to keep tax rates low when they are afraid that jobs and investment can move to countries (or states) with better tax...
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A State Suicide Pact
There are some very important long-run demographic and cultural trends in the United States. The aging of the population – and the concomitant problem of poorly designed entitlement programs – probably...
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The Most Uplifting Chart (so far) of 2023
I wrote in both 2021 and 2022 about states enacting lower tax rates. And that includes several states (Iowa, Idaho, Arizona) adopting flat taxes. Today, let’s quantify these developments. Our friends...
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The IMF’s Dirigiste Tax Agenda, Part I
Thanks in large part to the pro-growth agendas of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but also giving credit to policymakers in nations like Ireland and Switzerland, businesses (and their workers,...
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More Evidence of State Tax Progress
It usually is not fun writing about public policy, given my libertarian sentiments. After all, politicians have a natural tendency to expand their powers and diminish our liberties. So where there is...
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(Even Better) State Tax Rankings
There’s been great progress in recent years with regards to state tax policy. When I put together my first ranking back in 2018, there were 9 states with flat taxes and and 3 states with low-rate...
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France, Taxes, and Math
I normally write a column every year (2021, 2020, 2019, etc) when the Tax Foundation releases its International Tax Competitiveness Index, in part because I’m curious to see how the United States...
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Time to (Finally) Defund the OECD?
Nearly 13 years ago, I narrated this video about the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based international bureaucracy that uses American tax dollars to advocate for bigger...
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Blue-to-Red Migration, Part I
I realize it’s not nice to take pleasure in the misfortune of others, but that rule does not apply when bad things happen to greedy politicians. As such, I greatly enjoy reading about when taxpayers...
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Latin America and Fiscal Suicide
The economic policy lessons from Latin America are very clear. There’s one unambiguous success story (at least until the past couple of years), one semi-decent success story, and then a bunch of utter...
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The Feel-Good Map of 2023
Last year, I shared the “Feel-Good Map of 2022” that showed 18 states had lowered personal and/or corporate income tax since the start of 2021. And that was after showing a map of 11 state lowering tax...
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Blue-to-Red Migration, Part III: The Slow-Motion Suicide of High-Tax States
In Part I and Part II of this series, we looked at how taxpayers are moving from high-tax states to low-tax states. For Part III, let’s start with a map from the Tax Foundation, which shows which...
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Debunking the Global Corporate Tax Cartel, Part I
Early in the Biden years, I wrote a three-part series (here, here, and here) to explain why a global minimum tax on companies is a bad idea. As I told the BBC back in 2021, this proposed tax cartel is...
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The Slow-Motion Suicide of New York and California
Two of the worst states for tax policy are California and New York. They have punitive income tax rates, high sales taxes, and myriad other ways of diverting money from the productive sector of the...
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The 2023 International Tax Competitiveness Index
As I did with the 2022 issue, the 2021 issue, the 2020 issue, etc, let’s analyze the results of the new International Tax Competitiveness Index from the Tax Foundation. In part, the results are boring...
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Blue-to-Red Tax Migration, Part IV
State-to-state migration is an underappreciated issue, for both economic and political reasons. And I’ve explained that taxes play a huge role. In Part I of this series, we looked at how people – and...
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Blue-to-Red Tax Migration, Part V
Time for the final segment of my five-part series for 2023 on blue-to-red tax migration (previous versions here, here, here, and here). We’ll start with this table showing what has happened in...
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A State Suicide Pact, Part II
Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a column about a coordinated effort to impose class-warfare tax increases in seven left-wing states. Fortunately, that effort fizzled. Meanwhile, there was...
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Florida’s One-Man Laffer Curve
Inflation is having an effect on everything, even policy analysis. Back in 2013, I wrote that Phil Mickelson was “California’s One-Man Laffer Curve” because he wanted to escape the Golden State to save...
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Promote U.S. Prosperity by Rejecting the OECD Tax Cartel
I support tax competition because it is our best hope of avoiding “goldfish government.” As such, I’m very opposed to tax harmonization schemes, all of which are designed to make it easier for...
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The Tax-Cartel Crowd Now Wants a Global Wealth Tax
When I give speeches about the global fight between tax competition and tax harmonization, especially when speaking in jurisdictions with good tax policy, I usually point out that that compromise is a...
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