Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| What Policymakers Can Learn from Canada's Corporate Tax Cuts Canada's federal corporate tax rate plunged from 38 percent in 1980 to just 15 percent by 2012; there has been no obvious drop in tax revenues over the period... |
| Tax Simplification Individual taxpayers spend $35 billion out-of-pocket in filing their taxes, with the average non-business individual filer spending $160 on tax filing help... |
| The Dangers of Raising Taxes on Investment Income There is good reason to believe that higher rates on capital gains and dividend income would have negative effects on the U.S. economy by reducing the overall level of U.S. investment and by driving such investment to overseas markets... |
| The Dark Side of the Payroll Tax Cut Now that income tax revenues have been siphoned off to fund the mushrooming requirements of a Social Security program that can no longer pay for itself, it will likely become easier to do this again in the future... |
| How to Stop Sports Stadium Madness: Is Fan Ownership the Answer? Owners of major sports franchises claim that taxpayer support for the team will have a net positive return to the community; this claim, however, is largely unfounded... |
| The Inconsistencies of the Obama Corporate Tax Plan President Obama's tax proposal includes further effort to tax foreign activities of American multinational businesses, placing American tax policy further at odds with the tax systems of the rest of the developed world... |
| Meals Taxes in Major U.S. Cities Minneapolis, Minnesota, has the highest combined sales-meal tax with a rate of 10.775 percent... |
| Tax Reform to Encourage Growth, Reduce the Deficit and Promote Fairness Marginal tax rates on additional increments of productive activity are too high, discouraging people from productive behavior... |
| Spain Becomes One of Europe's Highest Taxed Countries Spain's highest marginal rate will be raised to the third-highest in the European Union (52 percent), following those of Sweden and Belgium (56.4 percent and 53.7 percent, respectively)... |
| The $44 Billion Price Tag of State Retiree Health Insurance Illinois has promised, in today's dollars, nearly $44 billion in retiree health benefits to government employees over the next 30 years... |
