Retail prices make poor targets for excise tax policy, often reflecting factors that have little to do with the underlying reasons for which an excise tax is levied in the first place. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a growing preference for using tax share of retail price (tax incidence) as a primary policy target.
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However well-intended they may be, sales tax holidays remain the same as they always have been—ineffective and inefficient.
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Policymakers are increasingly considering taxes on data processing and other businesses’ digital services, but these taxes increase costs at many stages of the production process for virtually all businesses, not just tech-oriented businesses.
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NYC’s congestion tolling has reduced congestion, raised money for the MTA, and sped up vehicles in the city. Its success has inspired proposals for congestion tolling in other major US cities, like Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
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A destination-based value-added tax (VAT) or goods and services tax (GST) is a better instrument for taxing digital consumption by avoiding cascading. Recent experience shows that governments can tax digital consumption with a better structure than DSTs.
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Poland is currently moving forward with legislation aimed at introducing a windfall profits tax. In doing so, it is following a broader European trend of renewed interest in such taxes in response to rising fuel prices triggered by the conflict in the Middle East.
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The five states with the highest average combined state and local sales tax rates are Louisiana (10.13 percent), Tennessee (9.61 percent), Washington (9.57 percent), Arkansas (9.48 percent), and Alabama (9.46 percent).
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As the alcohol industry innovates with newer products like high alcohol content beer or ready-to-drink cocktails, the efficacy of a categorical system continues to break down.
Short FormJust as many parts of American life have transformed over the past 250 years, so too has the federal tax system. While most taxes levied in the 18th century are still levied in some form today, the federal government’s reliance on them, the complexity of the tax code, and Americans’ overall tax burdens have shifted considerably.
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In recent years, several countries have taken measures to reduce carbon emissions, including instituting environmental regulations, emissions trading systems (ETSs), and carbon taxes.
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It is good to see senators talking about the Social Security crisis that is rapidly unfolding. But any serious proposal has to grapple with the trade-offs of different reforms and accept that the fix will come from both sides of the ledger: taxes and expenditures.
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Short FormBritish taxation on the American colonies was a major catalyst for the American Revolution, but most of the tax revolts leading up to the war were in response to one tax type: excise taxes.
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With nearly 2 million US jobs tied to trade with Canada and Mexico, stalling renewal — or withdrawing outright — would compound tariff uncertainty at exactly the wrong time.
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Digital services taxes address a real concern—the need to adapt taxation to the digital economy—but they are not the right solution. They raise limited revenue, are often passed on to consumers rather than large digital firms, create economic distortions, increase complexity and compliance costs, negatively impact innovation and competitiveness, and risk international retaliation.
Whether a sommelier or a casual enjoyer, wine drinkers may not be aware of just how much they are paying in taxes to uncork their drink of choice.
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Since digital services taxes generate little revenue, place the cost on European consumers and not on large digital companies as intended, and risk escalating trade disputes, policymakers should rethink their strategy.
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Voters beware: lower property taxes may sound good, but they come with significant trade-offs.
A study from the Fraser Institute finds the US tax code is highly progressive relative to other OECD countries.
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The Reform UK proposal to exempt overtime pay from income tax—framed as a “hard work bonus”—may be politically appealing, but it’s a flawed idea that undermines economic fairness, distorts labor markets, and jeopardizes tax revenues.
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In the United States, taxes are the single most expensive ingredient in beer. The tax burden accounts for more of the final price of beer than labor and materials combined—the many different layers of applicable taxes combining to total as much as 40.8 percent of the retail price.
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