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.
6 min read
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.
7 min read
Because withholding taxes can create double taxation and administrative friction even where foreign tax credits are available, the European Commission’s 2026 Tax Omnibus proposal to eliminate them on dividend, interest, and royalty payments between EU companies regardless of holding percentage would foster stronger cross-border savings and investment.
6 min read
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.
4 min read
If you want more energy production, taxing producers is the wrong place to start. And if you want to tax companies more if they’re making big profits, the corporate income tax already does that.
Introduced by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Michael Bennet (D-CO), The Taxing Buybacks from Big Oil Windfalls Act would raise the stock buyback excise tax from 1 percent to 25 percent for large oil and gas companies.
4 min read
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.
President Donald Trump has decided against a clean extension of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), allowing the bloc of countries to enter a prolonged period of annual reviews, renegotiations, and, possibly, a shift to bilateral deals.
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.
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.
14 min read
Voters beware: lower property taxes may sound good, but they come with significant trade-offs.
Europe’s turn toward the UN is ultimately not a sign that governments are ready to resolve fundamental disputes over taxing rights. If anything, international cooperation on the goal that matters most—fair treatment of cross-border trade—is crumbling.
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.
4 min read
AI may be a transformative technology, but that is not a good justification for throwing core principles of tax policy out the window.
Illinois plans to impose a complicated, legally fraught new social media tax based on a few pages of confused, contradictory, and almost laughably incomplete legislative text embedded in the new budget.
10 min read
While a proposal to phase down property taxes on the primary residences of Florida homeowners may grab headlines, it risks severely undermining the competitiveness of Florida’s overall tax structure and leaving the state worse off.
7 min read
Voters in California this fall will have to determine whether the state will institute a billionaire tax. Advocates of this proposal have been pushing for these kinds of money grabs for decades—and their arguments often run the same. The base is narrow, the lifespan is limited, the cause is sympathetic.
Currently, the European Commission has plans to generate more tax revenue to fund the forthcoming MFF, the long-term budget running from 2028 to 2034. But the truth is, without serious reform, the EU isn’t ready for new taxation.
If approved by voters, the wealth tax will face a flurry of serious legal challenges—some to its overall constitutionality, and some regarding who can be taxed and to what degree if the tax survives broader legal scrutiny.
24 min read
Alcohol taxes in Illinois have been broken for decades, and the state is now considering a “fix” that moves policy in the wrong direction.
6 min read