Category Tax policy
Radical tax policy ideas – or just bad ones?
In a recent article in Policy Options, Professor Tom Kent proposed bewildering variety of tax policy suggestions. Most are, in my opinion, bad ideas. His most radical one is to abolish the corporate income tax and the dividend tax credit.
Does Canada need a progressive consumption tax?
Robert Frank argues that the US should replace its income tax with a progressive consumption tax: By replacing federal income taxes with a steeply progressive consumption tax, the United States could erase the federal deficit, stimulate additional savings, pay for valuable public services and reduce overseas borrowing — all without requiring difficult sacrifices from taxpayers. […]
Does monitoring charities make a difference?
The website charitynavigator.org rates US charities. Although it's now changing its rating system, a charity that spends a low percentage of its budget on fundraising and administration will usually get a high rating. It's not clear how much influence sites like charitynavigator have. A recent article reported that only 10 percent of Americans consulted a […]
The NDP’s misdiagnosis
A couple of weeks ago, the NDP suggested removing the GST from heating bills, and I bemoaned the idea as just another example of a policy designed to fit a communications strategy instead of the other way around. I was hoping that the proposal would do the decent thing and go away quietly, but the […]
Corporate tax cuts by the numbers
The federal government is set to reduce corporate income tax (CIT) rates from 18% to 16.5% in January of 2011, and then again to 15% in 2012. The effects of these measures have been characterised in two ways: $6b per year in tax revenues. The Liberals use this number when they explain that they are […]
Why would we assume that high earners are price takers in the labour market?
Greg Mankiw's column in the New York Times makes the point that available evidence – in the US as well as Canada – suggests that high earners have higher labour supply elasticities than do workers lower down in the income distribution. As a result, increasing income tax rates on high earners would have disproportionately stronger […]
Britain’s proposed child benefit taxback is inefficient
Today the BBC reports that child benefit is to be axed for higher-rate taxpayers. Some background: ideally, a person's tax liabilities reflect his or her ability to pay taxes. Most tax systems recognize that having children reduces ability to pay, so provide parents with some kind of tax relief. In the late 1970s, the British […]
Walt Disney, War and Taxes
In the 1940s, Walt Disney contributed to America's war effort through his propaganda cartoons. In The Spirit of 43, Scrooge McDuck urges Donald Duck to save up to pay his taxes – "it's your dough, but it's your war too." Because "taxes will keep democracy on the march." The New Spirit is stirring stuff – […]
Gender equity and vertical equity
I'm spending today writing a review of Caren Grown and Imraan Valodia's new book Taxation and Gender Equity.The review is for the journal Feminist Economics, but I'll give you an uncensored sneak preview of the good bits here.
Federal Taxation of Labour Income in Canada is Regressive (in Terms of Marginal Rates)
Or at least, it is for some ranges of income. Don't believe me that marginal tax rates are regressive? Follow me:
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