Internet Sales Tax Is a Bad But Necessary Idea

The Financial Times recently published commentary by Jacob Weisberg deploring Amazon.com’s use of political and financial  muscle to avoid collecting sales taxes on out-of-state purchases. Amazon, he  notes, only recently relented because the company sees greater advantage in  positioning warehouses closer to customers.

Wall Street Journal writer Gordon Crovitz  …

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Taxes on Financial Transactions Won’t Save Europe

Would a tiny tax on securities turnover corral the frightening volatility of global financial markets and raise a ton of revenue painlessly in the process? Or would it undermine innovation and drive trading to friendlier climes? There will soon be no need to speculate (pun intended). Eleven EU countries are …

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The Minimum Wage Puzzle

If you want to start a debate among economists just say “minimum wage.”  While some argue raising the wage is economic justice, others worry that it just boosts layoffs.   In a new piece posted at Yahoo.com, we argue that the Earned Income Tax Credit may offer a more effective way …

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The Case for Taxing Frequent Flier Miles

Road warriors arise! You have nothing to lose but the tax deductibility of your frequent flier miles.

Or something like that … When the airlines started doling out benefits linked to miles flown, in the late 1970s, the Internal Revenue Service took its cue from …

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Taxing Amazon: Out of State Doesn’t Mean Out of Mind

Is Amazon a great company, or what? As aficionados of innovation (and, face it, recreational online shopping), it’s been a pleasure to watch the company become a retailing giant. Trouble is, Amazon has been as innovative in its campaign to avoid collecting state sales taxes as …

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Drunk on Subsidies

We join the 99.974 percent of economists in applauding the Senate’s bipartisan vote to repeal the 45-cent-a-gallon tax credit reaped by ethanol refiners and the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on ethanol imports. That doesn’t mean we’re done with the credit, of course: The refiners, led by ADM, will have a thing …

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The One That Got Away

As everybody knows, Pres. Obama unveiled a $350 billion mini-stimulus package last week, one consisting of accelerated investment write-offs, a permanent tax credit for R&D and another round of infrastructure spending. We hope (but doubt) he can convince Congress to go along: With unemployment seemingly stuck above 9 percent, the …

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The Real Thing?

I’m of two minds about revenue-starved states that are taking on powerful bottled soda interests by proposing hefty taxes on calorically sweetened soft drinks. On the one hand, taxes on external costs may, in principle, increase efficiency rather than decrease it. On the other, while it is plausible that sweetened drinks …

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Bait and Switch

Howard Gleckman, the editor of TaxVox, reminds us why the Alternative Minimum Tax , the despicable bait-and-switch provision of the federal tax code that steals back most deductions for upper-middle-income taxpayers, is so hard to fix on a permanent basis. Every official body that projects federal …

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The Impossible Dream

Megan McArdle’s analysis of tax burdens in The Atlantic business blog offers a nice dose of common sense, which has largely been missing from the ritual grumbling over Tax Day. She notes that, while the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes are regressive, the working poor are …

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