If you celebrate tax day like me — by whispering over and over again the dollar amount that you had to mail in while Google searching “how to fake your own death” — you could probably use a lighthearted little break in the day. So here’s a cartoon featuring the Beatles’ encounter with the taxman, including … Read more
When people stop coming to a restaurant, you suspect there’s something wrong with the food. When people stop watching a TV show, you assume there’s something wrong with the story. But when businesses start going through all the trouble of pulling up stakes in America and moving to other countries, our ruling class don’t think … Read more
From Prager University, a neat little explanation of why cutting tax rates doesn’t always mean reducing government revenue. So, if there’s a point at which raising tax rates leads to less government revenue, why do advocates of big government always want higher and higher taxes? It’s not because they don’t understand the Laffer Curve; they … Read more
Someone has apparently hacked into The New York Times’ website. How else to you explain this editorial?: In recent decades, American workers have suffered one body blow after another: the decline in manufacturing, foreign competition, outsourcing, the Great Recession and smart machines that replace people everywhere you look. Amazon and Google are in a horse … Read more
John Fund covers my soul brother on The Corner: The British Observer newspaper interviewed the singer while on a trip to West Africa last week and grilled him on his tax decisions: “Was it not hypocrisy for you to try to hold the Irish government to account for its spending while going through fairly exhaustive … Read more
The front runner to be the next Smoot-Hawley Tariff? The terrible and Orwellian-named Marketplace Fairness Act. At the Points and Figures blog, Jeff Carter breaks it down: The tax will restrict competition. Today, people have a choice between online and physical retailers. Physical retailers know that a person can enter their shop, whip out their … Read more
While you wait for your 1099s to arrive in the mail and schedule an appointment with your expensive accountant, take a moment to reflect on the 100th anniversary of the 16th amendment, and all the terrible, terrible decisions of all the voters who ratified it and brought this pain upon you. Dan Mitchell writes on … Read more
On Reason.com, a little perspective on what taxes really are from Sheldon Richman (Ha! Get it? He’s a Richman, so he’s against taxes! Golly, wordplay is fun.): Far from some enlightened institution, taxation began when conquerors realized that formal and continuing appropriation of a subject population’s wealth was preferable to hit-and-run pillaging. For this to … Read more
Instapundit (peace be upon him) is finally spreading his wings and trying to get some exposure on the internet. He’s in USA Today with an article about how everybody should pay taxes: According to a national poll last week, 79% of Americans think that all Americans should pay income tax, regardless of their incomes. That … Read more
Via you know who, a story told in graphs of who really bears the tax burden in America, including these beauties: Taxes paid by income quintile: Sources of federal revenue: Tax hikes under Obama’s budget:
There’s a certain cohort of people who think it’s a terrible indictment to say that Mitt Romney didn’t pay some maximum possible amount of taxes. Any kind of tax shelter he’s used is called a “scheme” and described in the shadiest terms possible. When they print stories like this, my only question is, Who in … Read more
It’s the same idea (kinda) as the Laffer Curve, but it’s the Lovitz Curve: a graph that shows how much class warfare rhetoric Hollywood liberals will tolerate before they start to revolt: Just as in a Laffer Curve, Revenue and Support from Hollywood (RASH) is at a minimum for any politician who (like President Reagan, … Read more
People who are planning to make a lot of money are starting to look at opportunities for doing it elsewhere. For instance, Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, is getting out of Dodge before the company goes public: Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering … Read more
We’ve heard a lot of talk lately about how we all need to kick in a little more to the government in the interest of helping the less fortunate among us. Not to private charitable organizations or churches, mind you. No, only more and larger government programs can salve the wounds of mankind and raise … Read more