Taxation

Government as Parasite

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2001

The Republicans still don’t get it. They say they want a tax cut because “the surplus is the people’s money,” but their heart isn’t in it. If they truly believed that, they wouldn’t quickly add that we need a tax cut to avert a recession. They supported the tax cut before ...

April Is the Cruelest Month

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2001

Taxes. Fiscal force. This is the month that you are ordered to reduce your financial life to a series of complex tax forms and get them into the IRS. This is the month that your report to the government is due. The authorities are waiting to hear from you. Don't ...

Tax Cuts Need No Justification

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

Tax cuts do not have to justified. It’s government spending that that has to be justified. I realize that is contrary to virtually every news report and analysis of President Bush’s plan to cut income tax rates. To listen to the news media, you’d think the government creates the wealth in ...

Kill the Death Tax

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

Are we supposed to be impressed that some of the country’s richest men want the government to continue taxing estates? I don’t see why their opinion on this matter is worth more than that of anyone else. After all, just because someone is good at making money, that doesn’t make ...

The IRS: Still a Grave Threat to Freedom

by James Bovard February 1, 2001

THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION just succeeded in brow-beating Congress into giving the Internal Revenue Service one of the largest budget increases in the agency’s history. Clintonites had warned that, without a windfall for the revenuers, America was at grave risk of insufficient tax audits. Clinton persuaded much of the media ...

Repeal the Income Tax

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2001

Defending his tax-cut proposal last night, President Bush said, "Unrestrained government spending is a dangerous road to deficits, so we must take a different path. Let the American people spend their own money to meet their own needs, to fund their own priorities, and pay down their own debts." What ...

The Marc Rich Pardon

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2001

"Everybody's upset with former President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, the financier who had been indicted by a New York grand jury under former U.S. Attorney Rudy Guliani for buying and selling oil at the wrong price and with the wrong country and for not paying taxes on the profits. Okay, ...

Bring Back the Deficit!

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2001

Should we cut taxes or should we pay off the national debt? What’s missing from this picture? Aside from the fact that paying off the debt need not be a priority (there is no connection between the debt and economic growth), the question is a classic case of the Fallacy of ...

Wishing You a Free and Merry Christmas

by Doug Bandow December 1, 2000

CHRISTMAS IS THE TIME of goodwill, when everyone thinks of giving. And giving their own money, not other people’s money. Even in Washington, D.C. But in Washington, at least, Christmas is probably the only time of the year when anyone thinks about spending his own money.

The $9 Trillion Federal Budget

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2000

George Bush would spend more on a tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent than he would spend on Social Security, health care, education, and the armed forces combined. Vice President Al Gore said that, or something like it, hundreds of times in the debates and on the campaign stump. Just once I’d like to see Governor Bush say to ...

Where Is Freedom in the Income-Tax Debate?

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2000

The debate over income-tax cuts between George W. Bush and Al Gore reflects how far Americans have plunged in their understanding of what it means to be free. If elected president, Bush proposes to cut income taxes by $1.3 trillion. Gore is calling the plan "a tax cut for the rich" ...

Who’s Negative?

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2000

Why is it considered negative campaigning to say, “My opponent has a credibility problem,” but it is not negative to say, “We’re for the people; they’re for the powerful”? According to virtually all mainstream observers, the first is ...