Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Halloween Takes on a New Meaning and It Isn’t Happy

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Since the inception of this blog, each year when Halloween rolled around, I have focused on a connection between that holiday and taxation. ...
Monday, October 29, 2012

When Privatization Fails: Yet Another Example

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About five months ago, in Are Private Tolls More Efficient Than Public Tolls? , I described why it is wrong to put public assets into the ha...
Friday, October 26, 2012

How Not to Spend Tax Revenues

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Though I have been accused of being a fan of raising taxes to support increased spending, the reality is that I favor spending reductions wh...
Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Defending the Mileage-Based Road Fee

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Sometimes it’s easy to determine when an idea is gaining traction. The signal is the increase in the frequency and intensity of criticism of...
Monday, October 22, 2012

The Expensing Deduction is an Expensive and Broken Idea

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It never stops. Usually it is a proposal to permit businesses to claim deductions for expenditures that otherwise would be capitalized and r...
Friday, October 19, 2012

Fishing for Deductions

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When Congress creates provisions to benefit specific taxpayers in specific areas that have been economically disadvantaged, it ends up creat...
Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Which Do You Prefer: Income Tax, Earned Income Tax, Sales Tax, Property Tax?

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At least in Pennsylvania, and most likely in other states, taxpayer dislike of real property taxes is pronounced. There almost always is pro...
Monday, October 15, 2012

Taking Tax Money Without Giving Back: Another Reality

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My objections to spending tax dollars to finance the sports stadium projects of multimillionaires and billionaires is no secret. Eight years...
Friday, October 12, 2012

Fixing and Building Highways: An Excuse for Enriching the Private Sector?

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California Representative John Campbell has joined the chorus of voices arguing that America’s infrastructure, particularly highways, bridge...
Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Using Tolls to Fund Other Projects

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As I explained in The Revenue Diversion Problem , “I take a dim view of governments diverting user fee revenue to purposes unrelated to the ...
Monday, October 08, 2012

Say One Tax-and-Spending Thing, Do Another

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They say they detest taxing people and using the proceeds to fund government expenditures. Presumably they detest even more the practice of ...
Friday, October 05, 2012

Progress Against Revenue Diversion

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Several months ago, in The Revenue Diversion Problem , I criticized the decisions by some states to funnel a significant portion of the proc...
Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Dependency, Government Spending, Tax Breaks, and Middle School

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As I mentioned last week in Biting the Tax Hand That Feeds the Tax Critic , the Republican candidate for the Presidency has made it clear h...
Monday, October 01, 2012

Federal Agency Tax Withholding: Making the Simple Complicated

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Thursday’s Philadelphia Inquirer brought a story about the failure of federal agencies to pay over federal income taxes and social security...
Friday, September 28, 2012

Taxes and Services

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There was an interesting editorial in Monday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, which reacted to a recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts indicati...
Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Biting the Tax Hand That Feeds the Tax Critic

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The Republican candidate for the presidency holds in disdain people he describes as dependent on government. He considers this dependency to...
Monday, September 24, 2012

Raising the Tax Shame Noise Level

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Attempts to shame people into paying their taxes are multiplying and taking on new forms. Back in March, I considered the effectiveness of t...