Scott’s Research
Illinois Policymakers say: “The deal is, they take three months of grocery money in exchange for chips and a sandwich”
photo credit: Ewan-M In a saga that falls into the category, “you just can’t make this stuff up” . . . Illinois policymakers recently enacted one of, if not the largest, tax hike in state history only to find themselves faced with threats of companies leaving the state. The response, give away special tax breaks [...]
Oklahoma’s Improved Economic Performance Suggests Right to Work Is Working
My latest study for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs finds that critics of Oklahoma’s right-to-work law are wrong. From the study: On September 25, 2001, Oklahoma voters went to the polls and passed a constitutional amendment—Right to Work (RTW)—which gave workers the choice to join or financially support a union. This made Oklahoma the [...]
Taxes Matter 13: Maine’s Sales Tax, Tax Zappers and the Laffer Curve, Oh My!
photo credit: OhMyGouda in Florida I just posted this on The Maine Heritage Policy Center’s blog (Maine Freedom Forum), but I also wanted to share this with Wealth Alchemy’s audience because so many of you will likely be seeing this debate coming soon to your own state. Also, we all need to realize that the [...]
We are 21
The good folks at the Illinois Policy Institute have taken some of my research and created a new website call “We are 21.” It’s based on the fact that in Illinois it takes 21 private sector workers to fund 1 state government worker. Here is a cool video they have made: The great thing I [...]
Economic Freedom and Economic Progress
photo credit: Alotor Matt Mitchell over at Mercatus’s blog, Neighborhood Effects, has been examining the usefulness of various freedom indices and their ability to predict economic progress. His conclusion in particular caught my eye: The two indices with the best record for predicting economic progress were the Economic Freedom of North America index by Fraser [...]
The Great Tax Divide: New Hampshire’s Retail Oasis vs. Maine’s Retail Desert
For those of you who may be wondering why my blog posts have been a bit irregular, you can blame my latest study: “The Great Tax Divide: New Hampshire’s Retail Oasis vs. Maine’s Retail Desert.” There are two versions of the study, one focused on Maine (published by The Maine Heritage Policy Center) and one [...]
Is it Really Just the Flat Tax versus the Fair Tax (Sales Tax)?
Dan Mitchell, with the CATO Institute, provides some reasons why he prefers the Flat Tax over the Fair Tax (sales tax) in this video: Unfortunately, the Fair tax has one glaring weakness in that a broad-based sales tax inevitably leads to tax pyramiding–the taxation of business-to-business transactions. Pyramiding leads to all kinds of distortions in [...]
Taxes Matter IX: U.S. Effective Corporate Tax Rate on Par with Uzbekistan
photo credit: upyernoz A distressing new study by well-respected Canadian tax economist–Duanjie Chen and Jack Mintz–for CATO found that the effective U.S. Corporate Tax was 34.6 percent in 2010 (pdf). The U.S. corporate rate is the 4th highest among all OECD countries and on par with Uzbekistan (34.9 percent). That’s what it says . . [...]
Landlords Get Caught in 1099 Dragnet
In my previous blog post, “Prepare for 900% Increase in 1099 Workload,” I estimated that the expanded requirements for filing a 1099 (on everything over $600 in value) could increase tax compliance as high as the estimated increase in revenue of $17 billion. So the economy would suffer a net loss of $34 billion ($17 [...]
New Hampshire House Passes Right-to-Work
The Union Leader, New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, is reporting that the New Hampshire House of Representatives has just passed a right-to-work bill 221 to 131. Currently, 22 states have right-to-work laws and none in New England so this is huge. Richard Vedder, the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio University, has [...]
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