How to Rate a Candidate’s Tax Plan

Tax reform has become a central issue in the presidential primary campaign, but how do the candidates’ tax plans compare? The various proposals vary considerably in their scope and intent, and it is important that they all be judged against a standard set of principles. Fortunately, a guide to those principles is now available from the Tax Foundation.

The new study by Will McBride, Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 286, “How to Judge a Tax Plan,” lays out the principles of sound tax policy and how to apply them to the tax reform ideas being put forward by the likes of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, and the rest of the presedential primary hopefuls.

Background information on the tax proposals of the current candidates is available on the Tax Foundation’s Presidential Candidate Tax Plan Comparison. Users can compare the plans side by side and click through to original source documents.