“We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.  But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.” With those words in his 2nd inaugural address, [...]

Last week Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal proposed replacing the state’s individual income and corporate taxes with a higher sales tax. While details are scarce, initial media reports suggest Jindal would both raise the sales tax rate and make more goods and services subject to the levy. Louisiana’s current 8.86 percent average combined state and [...]

The fiscal cliff deal is done and the question on everyone’s mind: What about the states?  Okay, so only a handful of us are actually asking this question. But there are some important provisions that will matter to states still woozy from the Great Recession. The good news for states is that American Tax Relief [...]

TaxVox proudly presents its 2012 Lump of Coal awards, Thelma and Louise edition, for the worst fiscal policy ideas of the year. The winners are: 10. California. The Golden State probably deserves a lifetime achievement Lump of Coal Award for its inability to balance its budgets, its government-by-initiative, and its endless bouts of fiscal wishful [...]

Starting today, it is legal to smoke marijuana in Washington State. That got me thinking: Could taxing stoners help balance state budgets? The answer is yes, but it wouldn’t help much. One 2010 study, done for the libertarian CATO Institute, figures legalizing and taxing weed would increase state tax revenues by about $9 billion a [...]

As Congress and President Obama continue to spar over how to avoid the looming fiscal cliff, most public attention has been focused on what tumbling over the edge would mean for the federal budget and the national economy. But the tremendous uncertainty over the threat of tax increases and cuts in federal spending could cause [...]

As politicians and their allies look for ways to finance tax rate cuts, a surprising option is getting a great deal of attention among conservatives: The tax exemption for municipal bonds. Mitt Romney’s economic adviser Glenn Hubbard, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and the American Enterprise Institute’s Matt Jensen are among those who in recent weeks [...]

On Monday, I attended my first meeting of the District of Columbia Tax Reform Commission.  The independent commission was authorized by the Tax Revision Commission Reestablishment Act of 2011 and is chaired by former DC Mayor Anthony Williams.  It includes ten other members appointed by Mayor Vincent Gray and Council Chairman Kwame Brown. I was [...]

Politicians and pundits constantly debate the size of government. Is it big or small? Growing or shrinking? You might hope these simple questions have simple answers. But they don’t. Measuring government size is not as easy as it sounds. For example, official statistics track two different measures of government spending. And those measures tell different [...]

On Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its first look at Gross Domestic Product and its components for the second quarter of the year plus revisions going back to 2009. Those data confirmed that weak government spending continues to hamper the economy.  In the second quarter, government spending declines subtracted more than a quarter [...]