Now that a once-obscure J.P. Morgan Chase derivatives trader named Bruno Iksil has become infamous as the London Whale, I suppose it is time to ask whether what he does should be subject to new taxes. The question predated Mr. Iksil’s misadventures, of course. Ever since the U.S. financial crash of 2008 and the beginnings of [...]

Europe is undergoing a massive political upheaval. You may have noticed. Caught in the wake of deep recession, painfully high unemployment, bank failures, and growing demands for fiscal austerity by the bond markets, governments across the continent are collapsing. In November, voters in Spain dumped a Socialist government for the conservatives. Last weekend in France, [...]

Last week, I blogged about a plan to use tax-exempt bonds to finance the demolition of vacant homes in distressed Midwestern neighborhoods.  Rolf Pendall, director of the Urban Institute’s  Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, has a different perspective: I agree entirely that a piecemeal approach to the current crisis isn’t appropriate and that the [...]

Two Ohio Members of Congress have introduced a bill to allow states to issue tax-exempt bonds to demolish buildings. Not to build them, but to destroy them. Score this one as a bad solution to a real problem. The lawmakers, Republican Steve LaTourette and Democrat Marcia Fudge, want to allow state governments to issue up to $4 [...]

Paul Ryan may not have intended it, but his 2013 budget is the strongest argument I’ve seen for why any serious fiscal plan must include new revenues. It’s far more convincing than partisan Democratic complaints. Ryan says he wants to balance the budget only by cutting spending. But he proved with hard, relatively specific numbers [...]

Last week, Mitt Romney proposed a new tax plan that would, among other things, reduce individual tax rates by 20 percent across the board and repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. To get a rough sense of what those two tax cuts would cost, the Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers. The result: They would be [...]

In the current issue of the journal The International Economy, ten economic thinkers shared their views on how best to restructure the tax system. Their opinions crossed the political spectrum, ranging from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) to the Economic Policy Institute’s Andrew Fieldhouse. Two of my Tax Policy Center colleagues—TPC director Donald Marron [...]

It looks like Congress is about to assume its default position: In the face of an intractable partisan dispute over how to pay for a government initiative, don’t. If Democrats won’t cut spending, and Republicans refuse to raise anybody’s taxes, there is always the solution they both can agree upon—just borrow the money and increase [...]

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on “Extenders and Tax Reform: Seeking Long-Term Solutions.”  It’s about time!  The charade of annual or biennial debate about perpetually “expiring” tax provisions is terrible tax policy and a symbol of our failure to come to terms with budget reality. If you need help sleeping, download the Joint [...]

A well-designed Value-Added Tax could simplify the tax code for most households and finance significant reductions in corporate and individual income tax rates without adding to the budget deficit. And it could be a key piece of a revenue system that is both progressive and less intrusive in economic decisions than today’s law. That’s the [...]