Taliban Tax Tyranny

When I write about taxation, it’s normally to address core economic issues such as marginal tax rates and double taxation.

Or sometimes very wonky topics such as depreciation, carry forwards, and worldwide taxation.

But I confess my favorite tax-related columns involve bizarre example of taxation from around the globe.

For instance, I wrote back in 2015 about how the barbarians from the Islamic State (ISIS) discovered the Laffer Curve when they tried to grab too much money from the unfortunate people in the territory they controlled.

I wonder if the Taliban in Afghanistan will soon learn the same lesson.

Here are some excerpts from a Wall Street Journal report by Saeed Shah.

…most businesses in Kabul’s busy Mandawi market got by without paying their taxes. That changed when the Taliban swept to power. …The Taliban has managed to squeeze more tax revenue out of the country than the previous U.S.-backed governments, even as the economy collapses and most Afghans are struggling to afford food. …“We are creating a culture of tax paying, in spite of all our problems,” said Nooruddin Azizi, the Taliban commerce minister. …it isn’t an easy pitch to make to a country that has plunged deeper into poverty since the Taliban took over in 2021… The Taliban has restricted women from parts of the workforce, depriving many families of livelihoods. The World Food Program says that 92% of households are straining to meet their basic food needs, including millions on the verge of famine. …The owner of a grocery store, near the hat shop, said that business was down 50% but now he has to pay his taxes, which cost twice as much. …“If we don’t pay the taxes, I’m afraid of a beating or being put in jail.” …Taxes collected from small businesses have tripled.

Taxes have tripled? I imagine Joe Biden, Crazy Bernie, and Elizabeth Warren are very jealous.

But my guess is that the Taliban thugs will soon learn there are limits to how much tax people can or will pay.

P.S. Here are some comparatively benign examples of quirky tax policies in other nations.

• Bizarrely foolish tax policies, such as the German tax on online coffee sales that loses money for government.
• Heartening protests against government greed, such as Irish taxpayers refusing to pay a housing levy.
• Quirky examples of tax avoidance in Ukraine, Finland, Scotland, and Catalonia.
• Inexplicable taxation rules, such as porn being taxed at lower rates than high culture in Spain.
• Strange forms of tax enforcement, such as transgender tax collectors in Pakistan.
• Governments get very creative, such as a German plan to tax prostitutes with parking meters.
• Clever forms of tax avoidance, such as the Spanish theatre that gave free passes to patrons who bought lightly taxed carrots.
• X-rated tax protests, such as the brothel owner in Austria who provided free “services” to lower his tax bill.
• Two straight men getting married in Ireland to escape the nation’s death tax.

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Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1960s?

Back in 2010, I shared a comparison of Obama and JFK on tax policy. For an update, here’s a comparison of Biden’s class-warfare agenda with JFK’s supply-side agenda.

I’m sharing this video for two reasons.

The first reason is that it shows that some Democrats in the past were very sensible about tax policy.

The second reason is that it gives me a good excuse to discuss what we can learn from tax policy in the 1960s, thus adding to our collection.

• Tax Lessons from the 1920s
• Tax Lessons from the 1930s
• Tax Lessons from the 1950s
• Tax Lessons from the 1980s

I’ll start with the caveat that tax policy does not necessarily overlap with 10-year periods. But we can learn by examining significant tax policy changes that occurred (or, in the case of the 1950s, did not occur) during various eras.

For the 1960s, the key change was the Revenue Act of 1964, generally known as the Kennedy tax cuts (proposed by President Kennedy in 1963 and then adopted in 1964 after his assassination).

Here’s what Kennedy proposed, as explained by the JFK library.

Declaring that the absence of recession is not tantamount to economic growth, the president proposed in 1963 to cut income taxes from a range of 20-91% to 14-65% He also proposed a cut in the corporate tax rate from 52% to 47%. …arguing that “a rising tide lifts all boats” and that strong economic growth would not continue without lower taxes.

And here’s what was enacted, as summarized by Wikipedia.

The act cut federal income taxes by approximately twenty percent across the board, and the top federal income tax rate fell from 91 percent to 70 percent. The act also reduced the corporate tax from 52 percent to 48 percent and created a minimum standard deduction.

The good news is that the Kennedy tax cuts were the right kind of tax cuts. Marginal tax rates were reduced on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.

The bad news is that the top tax rate was still confiscatory, though 70 percent obviously was not as bad as 91 percent. And a 48 percent corporate rate was not much of an improvement compared to 52 percent.

That being said, moving in the right direction produced good outcomes.

People often talk about the booming economy in the 1960s. And there is some evidence to support that view since inflation-adjusted economic output grew rapidly as the tax cuts were implemented – by 6.5 percent in 1965 and 6.5 percent in 1966.

But I’m cautious about drawing sweeping conclusions from short-run data, especially since we know many other policies also have an impact on economic performance.

So let’s focus instead on some tax-related variables. Here’s a chart that I shared back in 2015, showing that upper-income taxpayers paid more when tax rates were reduced (the same thing happened in the 1980s).

That chart was taken from a report I wrote way back in 1996.

And here’s another chart from the same publication. This one shows that lower tax rates were associated with rising revenues. Especially as the changes were being implemented.

By the way, this does not mean that the tax cut was self-financing.

The core lesson of the Laffer Curve is not that tax cuts “pay for themselves.” That only happens in rare circumstances.

Instead, the lesson is that lower tax rates encourage more productive behavior, which means more taxable income. It then becomes an empirical question of how much of the revenue lost from lower rates is offset by the revenue gained from more taxable income.

And, in the 1960s, we know there was a big Laffer Curve response from upper-income taxpayers. Why? Because they have considerable control over the timing, level, and composition of this income.

Which brings us to the final lesson, which is that class-warfare tax policy was a bad idea in the 1960s and it is still a very bad idea today.

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Defending the (Prudent Understanding of the) Laffer Curve

I’ve written dozens of articles about the Laffer Curve and most of that verbiage can be summarized in these five points.

• The Laffer Curve helps to illustrate that excessive tax rates result in less taxable activity.
• All public finance economists – even those on the left – agree there is a Laffer Curve.
• The Laffer Curve does not mean tax cuts are self-financing or that tax increases lose revenue.
• Different types of taxes produce different responses, so there is more than one Laffer Curve.
• There is a real debate about the shape of the Laffer Curve and the ideal point on the curve.

The fifth point recognizes that well-meaning and knowledgeable people can vigorously disagree.

Do changes in tax policy have big effects or small effects on the economy? How much revenue feedback will occur if there is a change in tax rates?

Just a couple of examples of questions that I have endlessly debated with reasonable folks on the left.

But let’s focus today on the unreasonable left. Or, to be more specific, let’s look at an editorial from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Here are some portions of that newspaper’s simplistic screed.

…the deficit explosion…effectively disproved his theory that cutting taxes on the rich would increase government tax revenue. …Laffer continues to be unchastened…, even as Britain reels from a leadership shuffle caused by the catastrophic application of his very theories. Hand it to Laffer: Seldom does someone who is so often proven wrong have the gumption to maintain he’s right… His famous “Laffer curve” presumes to prove that tax cuts for the rich will spur economic investment, causing such strong economic growth that the government’s tax revenue would actually rise instead of falling. …Yes, the economy was robust in the 1980s after Reagan’s historic tax cuts. But that’s also when the era of big budget deficits began. …congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump in 2017 slashed corporate taxes in what they claimed was a necessary economy-booster… Then-Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin’s famous vow that the tax-cut plan would “pay for itself” in growth — the very definition of Laffer’s theory — has since been exposed as the voodoo it always was.

Almost every sentence in the above excerpt cries out for correction.

For instance, Reagan and his team never claimed that the 1981 tax cuts would be self-financing (though IRS data shows that lower tax rates on the rich did produce more revenue).

There were big deficits because of the 1980-1982 double-dip recession, and that spike in red ink mostly took place before Reagan’s tax cuts went into effect.

And it’s absurd to blame the United Kingdom’s political instability on tax cuts that never occurred.

If Secretary Mnunchin claimed the entire tax cut would pay for itself, he clearly deserves to be mocked, but it’s worth noting that the lower corporate tax rate from the 2017 reform is very close to being self-financing.

Not that we should be surprised. Both the IMF and OECD have research showing that lower corporate tax rates do not necessarily lead to lower corporate tax revenues.

The bottom line is that the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch obviously puts ideology above accuracy.

P.S. I can’t resist sharing one other excerpt from the editorial.

“The Kansas Experiment,” was a debacle. The state’s economy didn’t skyrocket, but the deficit did, forcing deep cuts to education before the legislature finally acknowledged defeat and reversed the tax cuts.

Once again, the editors are showing that ideology trumps accuracy. Here’s what really happened in Kansas. I hope we can have more defeats like that! Though I’ll be the first to admit that North Carolina is a much better role model.

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Hoover, FDR, Taxes, and the Great Depression

The 1930s arguably was America’s worst decade for economic policy and economic results.

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt both increased the burden of government and the net result was a decade-long depression.

The insult to injury was that some people then blamed free enterprise. Indeed, there are still people who think government actually saved the economy.

Sort of like applauding an arsonist after a fire is extinguished.

Whenever I deal with people who harbor these illusions, I ask them a series of questions, none of which have good answers (at least if the goal if to maintain the illusion).

• Was it the fault of capitalism that the Fed pursued bad monetary policy?
• Was it the fault of capitalism that Hoover imposed protectionism?
• Was it the fault of capitalism that Hoover and FDR expanded intervention?
• Was it the fault of capitalism that Hoover and FDR increased spending?

Today, let’s look at the role of tax policy in the 1930s. Chris Edwards wrote on this topic last week, citing a new book by Art Laffer, Brian Domitrovic, and Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield.

Here are some excerpts from Chris’ article.

Many economists would point to monetary policy mistakes for causing the initial slide into the Great Depression. …But Laffer and coauthors argue that the “chief cause of the Great Depression was taxation.” That is a bold claim because policymakers made many mistakes during the 1930s. …Let’s explore the major tax increases of the 1930s… Herbert Hoover signed the first two laws listed here and Franklin Roosevelt the others.

• Smoot‐​Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.
• Revenue Act of 1932.
• Gold Confiscation.
• Agricultural Adjustment Act.
• National Industrial Recovery Act.
• Alcohol.
• Revenue Act of 1934.
• Revenue Act of 1935.
• Social Security Act of 1935.
• Revenue Act of 1936.
• Revenue Act of 1937.
• Revenue Act of 1938.

State and local governments jacked up taxes during the 1930s. …high earners responded strongly to the income tax increases of the 1930s… the reported incomes of high earners got slugged in the early 1930s and remained low the rest of the decade. This suggests major economic damage. …Despite these taxpayer responses to higher tax rates, …governments did manage to squeeze substantially more money out of the public during the 1930s. Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP rose from 10.3 percent in 1929, to 15.4 percent in 1933, and then to 16.6 percent in 1940. Meanwhile, government spending soared from 9.9 percent of GDP in 1929 to 18.0 percent in 1932, and then remained near the higher level the rest of the decade.

Here’s a chart that accompanied the article showing the aggregate increases in the fiscal burden of government.

You’ll notice that aggregate tax revenues increased by about 60 percent during the 1930s.

Yet tax rates increased by a far greater amount. There’s a lesson to be learned, as I explained last year, about the Laffer Curve.

P.S. Our friends on the left like class-warfare tax increases because they hurt the rich, but they don’t seem to care that everyone else suffers collateral damage.

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The IMF, the Laffer Curve, and Supply-Side Economics

The Laffer Curve is a very straightforward concept.

It graphically illustrates why politicians are wrong if they think you can double tax revenue by doubling tax rates (or that revenues will drop by 50 percent if tax rates are cut in half).

Simply stated, you also have to look at what happens to taxable income.

In cases where taxpayers have a lot of control over the timing, level, and composition of their income, changes in tax rates may cause big changes in taxable income (or “tax base” in the jargon of economists).

None of this should be controversial. Even Paul Krugman agrees that the Laffer Curve exists.

Today, we are going to see that the pro-tax International Monetary Fund also admits there is a Laffer Curve.

Indeed, a new study authored by David Amaglobeli, Valerio Crispolti, and Xuguang Simon Sheng openly states that politicians should be very cognizant of the fact that some tax policy changes can have a big effect on the “tax base.”

This paper investigates the potential revenue impact of different tax policy changes using the Tax Policy Reform Database (TPRD)… Revenue responses to tax policy changes depend on many factors… However, one of most important factors is the nature of the tax policy change itself. For example, while a tax rate cut will directly lower revenue intake, it could also encourage more economic activity, hence expand the tax base. Estimating the revenue response to a tax policy change, therefore, requires granular information on the nature of this change, including on the tax instrument used (e.g., VAT or personal income tax), the type of change adopted (e.g., tax base, tax rate), and its timing and size.

Here are some of the findings.

We assess the impact of tax policy changes on tax revenues using Jordà (2005)’s local projections method. Our baseline results are based on tax shocks identified in the year when a tax change is announced. Our main empirical findings suggest that the revenue yield of tax policy changes varies significantly across taxes and types of changes, with tax rate changes generally having a more transitory revenue impact than tax base changes for most taxes. Specifically, base broadening changes in PIT, CIT, EXE, and PRO have on average a more significant and long-lasting impact on tax collection than rate changes. At the same time, rate hikes have relatively more significant effects on taxes in the case of VAT and SSC measures.

Most notably, the report finds tax increases hurt prosperity, especially higher marginal tax rates.

Gechert and Groß (2019) conclude that measures to broaden the tax base are less harmful to economic growth than tax hikes. Dabla-Norris and Lima (2018) find that during fiscal consolidations, tax base-broadening measures lead to smaller output and employment declines compared to measures to increase tax rates.

And we learn that it is very foolish to raise corporate tax rates.

Mertens and Ravn (2013) find that…increases in CIT are approximately revenue neutral for the United States. …Announcements of CIT increases are associated with a somewhat transitory rise in tax collection, suggesting that companies have quickly adapted their business to reduce the tax burden.

For wonky readers, here’s a chart from the study. Note how, in many cases, there’s not much difference in revenue between tax increases (blue line) and tax cuts (red lines).

P.S. One big takeaway is that there is not a single Laffer Curve. There are multiple Laffer Curves depending on the tax that’s being changed and the ability of taxpayers to change their behavior.

P.P.S. A less-obvious takeaway is that class-warfare taxes cause the most economic damage, meaning the most harm to ordinary people.

P.P.P.S. You can call it the “Khaldun Curve” if you prefer.

P.P.P.P.S. I have trouble deciding what evidence is most powerful, the views of CPAs or the data from the OECD?

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Corporate Tax Rates and Taxable Income

In the case of business taxation, the most visually powerful evidence for the Laffer Curve is what happened to corporate tax revenue in Ireland after the corporate tax rate was slashed from 50 percent to 12.5 percent.

Tax revenue increased dramatically. Not just in nominal terms. Not just in inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate receipts actually climbed as a share of GDP.

And this was during the decades when economic output was rapidly expanding.

In other words, the Irish government got a much bigger slice of a much bigger pie after tax rates were dramatically lowered.

Now let’s look at some evidence from a new study. Three professors from the University of Utah (Jeffrey Coles, Elena Patel, and Nather Seegert), and a Treasury Department economist (Matthew Smith) estimated what happens to taxable income for U.S. companies when there is a change in the corporate tax rate.

In response to a 10% increase in the expected marginal tax rate, private U.S. firms decrease taxable income by 9.1%, which indicates a discernibly more elastic response than prevailing estimates. This response reflects a decrease in taxable income of 3.0% arising from real economic responses to a firm’s scale of operations and 6.1% arising from accounting transactions via (for example) revenue and expense timing. Responsiveness to the corporate tax rate is more elastic if a firm uses cash (9.9%) rather than accrual accounting (7.4%), if the firm is small (9.9%) rather than large (8.6%), and if the firm discounts future cash flows at a lower rate.

The paper is filled with equation, graphs, and jargon, but the above excerpt tells us everything we need to know.

When tax rates go up, taxable income goes down (both because there is less economic activity and because companies have more incentive to manipulate the tax code).

Thus confirming what I wrote back in 2016 about taxable income being the key variable.

By the way, this does not mean that lower tax rates lead to more revenue. Or that higher tax rate produce less revenue.

Such big swings only happen in rare circumstances.

But it does mean that politicians will not grab as much money as they hope when they increase tax rates. And that they won’t lose as much revenue as they fear when they lower tax rates (and we saw that most recently with the 2017 tax reform).

I’ll close by noting that this is additional evidence for why we should be thankful that Biden’s proposal for higher corporate tax rates was not enacted.

P.S. The chart at the beginning of this column may be the most visually powerful evidence for the corporate Laffer Curve. The most empirically powerful evidence, however, comes from very unlikely sources – the pro-tax IMF and the pro-tax OECD.

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Corporate Taxes and the Laffer Curve

During the debate about the Trump tax plan, proponents made three main arguments in favor of reducing the federal corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.

1. A lower rate would be good for workers, consumers, and shareholders.
2. A lower rate would boost American competitiveness.
3. A lower rate would produce some revenue feedback for the IRS.

The last item involves the “Laffer Curve,” which is a graphical representation of the non-linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue.

Put in simple terms, entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners have more incentive to earn money when tax rates are modest.

High tax rates, by contrast, discourage productive behavior while also giving people a bigger incentive to find loopholes and other ways of avoiding tax.

This does not mean that lower tax rates produce more revenue, though that sometimes happens.

The main takeaway is the most modest observation that lower tax rates will lead to more taxable income, which means some revenue feedback.

In other words, tax cuts don’t lose as much revenue as predicted by simplistic models (and tax increases don’t generate as much revenue as predicted).

I’ve shared many, many real–world examples of this phenomenon.

And here’s another. Look at how corporate tax revenues in the United States are increasing at a faster rate than projected.

The chart comes from Chris Edwards, and he helpfully explains what has happened.

The revenue surge came as a surprise to government economists. The chart…compares the new Office of Management and Budget March 2022 baseline projections to prior baseline projections from the OMB in May 2021 and the Congressional Budget Office in July 2021. …congressional estimators figured that the government would lose an average $76 billion a year the first four years… Corporate tax revenues were down from 2018 to 2020, but then soared in 2021. Revenues in 2021 of $372 billion (with a 21 percent tax rate) are 25 percent higher than revenues in 2017 of $297 billion (with a 35 percent tax rate). …we’re learning that a lower corporate tax rate is consistent with strong corporate tax revenues. …lower rates…broaden bases automatically through reduced tax avoidance and higher economic activity. Other nations have learned the same lesson. Keeping the corporate tax rate low is a winner for businesses and workers, but it can also be a winner for government budgets.

The Wall Street Journal has a new editorial on this topic. Here are some relevant excerpts.

…the 2017 tax reform that cut corporate tax rates…has been a winner for the economy and federal tax coffers. …Corporate revenue was supposed to fall to historic lows as a share of the economy. Big business supposedly got a windfall and government was robbed. It hasn’t turned out that way. …the big news now is that more corporate tax revenue is flowing into the Treasury at record levels even with the lower rate. …In June 2017, before tax reform passed, CBO predicted corporate tax revenue of $383 billion in fiscal 2021. But in April 2018, after reform passed, CBO lowered its estimate to $327 billion.

So what happened in the real world?

Actual corporate income tax revenue in 2021 was $372 billion—nearly as much at a 21% rate as CBO expected at the 35% rate that was among the highest in the world. Fiscal 2022 is turning out to be even better for the Treasury. Corporate tax revenue for the first six months was up 22% from a year earlier to $127 billion. …What accounts for this windfall for Uncle Sam…? …the Occam’s razor policy answer is that corporate tax reform worked as its sponsors predicted: Lowering the rates while broadening the base by eliminating loopholes created incentives for more efficient investment decisions that paid off for shareholders, workers and the government.

Notice, by the way, that corporate tax revenues have increased faster than projected in both the 2017 forecast and the 2021 forecast.

All of which shows that I may have been insufficiently optimistic when I wrote about this issue last year.

P.S. The goal of tax policy (either in general or when looking at business taxation) is not to maximize revenue for politicians, but rather to maximize prosperity for people. Indeed, if better tax policy leads to a lot of revenue feedback, that’s an argument for further reductions in tax rates.

P.P.S. Both the IMF and OECD have research showing that lower corporate tax rates do not necessarily lead to lower corporate tax revenues.

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Deconstructing the Laffer Curve(s)

The Laffer Curve is a method for illustrating the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue.

But it’s important to realize that there are actually lots of varieties.

The Laffer Curve for capital gains taxes, for instance, will look different than the Laffer Curve for payroll taxes. Or corporate taxes. Or marijuana taxes.

In every case, the shape of the curve will depend on what’s being taxed and the ability of affected taxpayers to alter their behavior.

And the shape of the Laffer Curve also will depend on whether one is measuring the short-run revenue impact of tax changes or the long-run impact of tax changes.

Given all these varieties, no wonder so many people, both right and left, sometimes misstate its meaning.

Let’s try to expand our understanding of the Lafffer Curve by looking at some new research.

Professor Aaron Hedlund of the University of Missouri authored a study on the Laffer Curve for the Show Me Institute.

Here’s what he wants to understand.

Empirically, recent research provides a variety of estimates for the revenue-maximizing and welfare-maximizing tax rates, but one lesson that emerges is that analyses that only take into account the response of hours worked to tax increases are bound to greatly overestimate the amount of new revenue that can be raised while underestimating the economic damage from lost GDP growth and wages. This paper examines the relationship between tax rates and revenue by taking a broader view that encompasses the responses of skill acquisition, entrepreneurship, innovation, and the labor market behavior of dual-earner families. The bottom line that emerges is that these additional margins of adjustment imply significantly lower revenue-maximizing and welfare-enhancing tax rates.

He then explains that some economists fail to look at all possible behavioral responses.

Traditionally, much of the economic analysis aimed at finding this peak rate has focused on how the income tax rate affects an individual’s willingness to work, both with regard to hours worked and the decision to enter the labor force at all. Moreover, until the recent arrival of better data, much of the academic research considered only the response of heads of households. …This assumption of tax rate insensitivity led economists Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez to conclude that the optimal—revenue maximizing—top income tax rate is 73%. Moreover, in an analysis that also considers the social insurance benefits of progressive taxation—specifically, the ability of redistribution to soften the blow of unexpected economic hardship—economists Fabian Kindermann and Dirk Krueger provide justification for a top rate that approaches 90%. However, both studies omit the many other margins of behavioral adjustment that accompany any significant change to tax rates.

When all behavioral responses are measured, it turns out that the revenue-maximizing rate is much lower.

In one study that accounts for the sensitivity of entrepreneurs to tax rates, increasing the progressivity of the income tax code leads to a revenue-maximizing top rate of only 33%. Furthermore, in this case revenues only increase by 5%—amounting to less than one percentage point of GDP. Another study finds even starker results when looking at the subset of superstar entrepreneurs. In an analysis that incorporates the positive spillovers of ideas and innovation on economic growth, economist Charles Jones finds that the revenue-maximizing tax rate may even be as low as 29%. Furthermore, he shows that raising the top income tax rate to 75% could reduce GDP by over 8%, which would greatly blunt the impact on revenues by shrinking the tax base.

Figure 5 from the study shows how the revenue-maximizing rate varies depending on which factors are included in the study.

My two cents on this issue is to remind readers that we don’t want to maximize revenue for politicians.

As such, I don’t care if the revenue-maximizing rate in 29 percent or 73 percent.

I want to be at the growth-maximizing rate, which is where the government only collects the amount of money that is necessary to finance genuine public goods.

Needless to say, that means tax rates (and spending burdens) far lower than today.

P.S. Tax accountants have a very good understanding of the Laffer Curve.

P.P.S. Heck, even the thugs from ISIS understand the Laffer Curve.

P.P.P.S. Sadly, it doesn’t matter if some leftists understand the Laffer Curve.

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The Laffer Curve and Trump’s 21 Percent Corporate Tax Rate

Reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent was the crown jewel of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA).

• It was good for workers since a lower rate means more investment, which translates to increased productivity and higher wages.
• And it was good for U.S. competitiveness since the United States corporate tax rate no longer was the highest in the developed world.

Some critics downplayed those benefits and warned that a lower corporate tax rate would deprive the government of too much revenue.

Since I don’t want politicians to have more money, that was not a persuasive argument. Moreover, I argued during the debate in 2017 that a lower corporate tax rate would generate “revenue feedback.”

In other words, there would be a “Laffer Curve” effect as corporations responded to a lower tax rate by earning and reporting more income.

Based on the latest fiscal data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), I was right.

Corporate tax revenues for the 2021 fiscal year (which ended on September 30) were $370 billion. As shown in this chart, that’s only slightly below CBO’s estimate back in 2017 of how much revenue would be collected – $383 billion – if the rate stayed at 35 percent.

The chart also shows CBO’s 2018 estimate of what revenues would be in 2021 with a 21 percent rate (and if you want more data, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the Trump tax reform would reduce corporate revenues in 2021 by $131 billion).

This leads me to ask two questions.

1. Is this a slam-dunk argument for the Laffer Curve?
2. Did the lower corporate tax revenue generate so much revenue feedback that it was almost self-financing?

The answer to the first question almost certainly is “yes” but “don’t exaggerate” is probably the prudent response to the second question.

Here are a few reasons to be cautious about making bold assertions.

• CBO’s pre-TCJA estimate in 2017 may have been wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with the tax rate.
• CBO’s post-TCJA estimate in 2018 may have been wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with the tax rate.
• The surge of 2021 revenues may have been a one-time blip that will disappear or fade in the next few years.
• The coronoavirus pandemic, or the policy response from Washington, may be distorting the numbers.

These are all legitimate caveats, so presumably it would be an exaggeration to simply look at the above chart and claim Trump’s reduction in the corporate tax rate almost “paid for itself.”

But we can look at the chart and state that there was a lot of revenue feedback, which shows that the lower corporate tax rate did produce good economic results.

Perhaps most important, we now have more evidence that Biden’s plan to increase the corporate tax rate is very misguided. Yes, it’s possible that the President’s plan may generate a bit of additional tax revenue, but at a very steep cost for workers, consumers, and shareholders.

P.S. If you want an example of tax cut that was self-financing, check out the IRS data on how much the rich paid before and after the Reagan tax cuts.

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The Tradeoff Between Tax Progressivity and Economic Output

Almost everybody (even, apparently, Paul Krugman) agrees that you don’t want to be on the downward-sloping part of the Laffer Curve.

That’s where higher tax rates do so much economic damage that government collects even less revenue.

But I would argue that tax increases that produce more revenue also are a bad idea.

Sometimes they are even a terrible idea. For instance, there are tax increases that would destroy $5 of private income for every $1 of revenue they collect.

That would not be a good deal, at least for those of us who aren’t D.C. insiders.

Heck, according to research from economists at the University of Chicago and Federal Reserve, there are some tax increases that would destroy even greater levels of private income for every additional dollar that politicians got to spend.

The simple way of thinking about this is that you don’t want to be at the revenue-maximizing point of the Laffer Curve.

Because the closer you get to that point, the greater the damage to the private sector compared to any revenue collected.

To help understand this key point, let’s review a new study from Spain’s central bank. Authored by Nezih Guner, Javier López-Segovia and Roberto Ramos, it investigates the impact of higher tax rates.

They first look at what happens when progressivity (τ) is increased.

In the first experiment, we…change…the entire tax schedule, so that all households below the mean labor income face lower average taxes, while those above the mean income face higher average taxes. Since…richer individuals face higher taxes, all else equal, the government collects more taxes. All else, however, is not equal since more progressive taxes lower incentives to work and save. As a result, a higher τ might result in lower, not higher, revenue. The question is where the top of the Laffer curve is. We find that the tax revenue from labor income is maximized with τ = 0 .19. The increase in tax collection is, however, very small: the tax revenue from labor income increases only by 0.82% (or about 0.28% of the GDP). The tax revenue from labor income is, however, only one part of the total tax collection. There are also taxes on capital and consumption. With τ = 0 .19, while the tax collection from labor income is maximized, the total tax collection declines by 1.55%. This happens since with a higher τ, the aggregate labor, capital and output decline significantly. Indeed, the total tax collection falls for any increase in τ, and the level of τ that maximizes total tax revenue is much lower, τ = 0 .025, than its benchmark value.

The key takeaway is that more progressivity puts Spain on the wrong (downward-sloping) side of the Laffer Curve.

Here’s Table 6, which shows big declines in output, labor supply, and investment as progressivity increases.

Here’s some of the accompanying explanation.

The upper panel of Table 6 shows that capital, effective labor and output decline monotonically with τ. Hence, as the economy moves from τ = 0 .1581 to τ = 0 .19, the government is collecting higher taxes from labor, but the aggregate labor supply and output decline. For τ higher than 0.19, the decline in labor supply dominates and tax collection from labor income is lower. …The level of τ that maximizes the total tax collection is 0.025, which implies significantly less progressive taxes than in the benchmark economy. …In the economy with τ = 0 .025, the aggregate capital, labor and output increase significantly. The steady state output, for example, is almost 11 percentage points higher than the benchmark economy. As a result, the government is able to collect higher taxes despite lowering taxes on the top earners.

The authors also put together an estimate of Spain’s Laffer Curve, with the red-dashed line showing total tax revenue.

The authors also looked at what happens if politicians simply increase top tax rates.

They found that there are scenarios that would enable the Spanish government to collect more revenue.

We find that it is possible to generate higher total tax revenue by increasing taxes on the top earners. …The main message of our quantitative exercises is that…the extra revenue is not substantial. Higher progressivity has significant adverse effects on output and labor supply, which limits the room for collecting higher taxes. As a result, the only way to generate substantial revenue is with significant increases in marginal tax rates for a large group

But notice that those higher taxes would have “significant adverse effects on output and labor supply.”

Which brings us back to the earlier discussion about the desirability of causing a lot of damage to the private economy in order to give politicians a bit more money to spend.

The authors have a neutral tone, but the rest of should be able to draw the logical conclusion that higher taxes would be a big mistake for Spain.

And since the underlying economic principles apply in all nations, we also should conclude that higher taxes would be a big mistake for the United States.

P.S. We conducted a very successful experiment in the 1980s involving lower tax rates. Biden now wants to see what happens if we try the opposite approach.

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Corporate Taxes and the Laffer Curve

In a new documentary film, Race to the Bottom, I had an opportunity to pontificate briefly about corporate tax and the Laffer Curve.

At the risk of understatement, I represented a minority viewpoint in the documentary. Most of the people interviewed had a negative view of tax competition, considering it to be (as suggested by the title) a “race to the bottom.”

By contrast, I view tax competition as a way of constraining the “stationary bandit” so that we don’t wind up with “goldfish government.”

For purposes of today’s column, though, I want to focus on the narrower issue of the relationship between corporate tax rates and corporate tax revenue.

In the above video, I asserted that lower rates did not result in lower revenue. Indeed, I even made the bold statement that revenues increased.

Is that correct?

Fortunately, I don’t need to do any elaborate calculations to prove my point. I’ll simply direct readers to the work of two left-leaning international bureaucracies.

Back in 2017, I cited an article form the International Monetary Fund that included a graph clearly illustrating that the drop in tax rates has not been accompanied by a drop in tax revenue.

This was a remarkable admission considering that the article argued in favor of higher tax burdens.

Likewise, last year I cited a study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that also acknowledged that falling tax rates on companies did not translate into lower revenues.

Given that the OECD has a big project to increase business tax burdens, that also was a startling admission.

None of this means, by the way, that lower rates always lead to more revenue.

Indeed, most tax cuts cause revenue to decline (though not as much as predicted by static estimates).

The bottom line is that lower tax rates are good for economic performance and my friends on the left shouldn’t get too worried about disappearing tax revenue.

P.S. There’s also some 2017 OECD data and 2018 OECD data about business tax rates and business tax revenues.

P.P.S. Earlier this year, I cited OECD data that also included personal income tax rates and tax revenue.

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A Primer on the Laffer Curve

Last week, I gave a presentation on the Laffer Curve to a seminar organized by the New Economic School in the nation of Georgia.

A major goal was to help students understand that you can’t figure out how changes in tax rates affect tax revenues without also figuring out how changes in tax rates affect taxable income.

As you might expect, I showed the students a visual depiction of the Laffer Curve, explaining that the government won’t collect any revenue if the tax rate is zero (the left point of the horizontal axis), but also pointing out that the government won’t collect any revenue if tax rates are 100 percent (the right point on the horizontal axis).

The curve between those two points shows how much tax is collected at various tax rates.

The upward-sloping part of the curve shows the “region of increasing revenue” (i.e., where higher tax rates produce more revenue) and the downward-sloping part of the curve shows the “region of declining revenue” (i.e., where higher tax rates produce less revenue).

I noted in my remarks that this is not a controversial concept.

Indeed, I’d wager that every economist in the world will agree.

Just in case you think I’m exaggerating, you can see in this video that even Paul Krugman agrees that there is a Laffer Curve.

Needless to say, this doesn’t mean that we agree on the shape of the Laffer Curve.

Even more important, we presumably don’t agree on the ideal point on the Laffer Curve.

I’m guessing he would want to be at the revenue-maximizing point, whereas I explained in the presentation that it’s much better to at the growth-maximizing point.

To show why this is an important distinction, I specifically cited research from two economists (one from the University of Chicago and one from the Federal Reserve) in hopes of getting students to understand that higher tax rates will destroy a lot of private income for every dollar of additional revenue that politicians will collect.

If you look at the nearby image, you’ll see that’s especially true for taxes on “capital” since households have much more control over the timing, level, and composition of business and investment income.

Maybe I’m just a wild-eyed libertarian, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to destroy lots of private income just so politicians get a bit of extra revenue to spend.

This does not mean, by the way, that the Laffer Curve is a panacea, or some sort of free lunch.

I should have shown the students this one-minute video clip of me pointing out that it’s only in rare circumstances that a tax cut generates enough additional growth (and therefore enough additional taxable income) to be self-financing.

To be sure, self-financing tax cuts do exist.

In the presentation, I shared the IRS data showing that the federal government collected fives times as much money from the rich after President Reagan reduced the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent.

And I also shared the OECD data showing that industrialized nations are collecting more revenue from income taxes today, as a share of economic output, than they were back in 1980 when top tax rates on personal and corporate income were much higher.

And I also could have cited interesting results from Canada, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom.

I’ll close by recycling my three-part video series from 2008 on the Laffer Curve (assuming you’re not already tired of my voice after the 22-minute presentation at the start of today’s column).

The first video discusses the theory.

The second video looks at the evidence.

And the third video shines a spotlight on the Joint Committee on Taxation’s primitive methodology for producing revenue estimates.

The good news is that the Joint Committee on Taxation has been dragged kicking and screaming in the right direction since 2008, so the present process for estimating the revenue impact of change in tax policy is somewhat more accurate.

P.S. Here’s my response to Matt Yglesias’ supposed debunking of the Laffer Curve.

P.P.S. I used to think my friends on the left could be persuaded since they presumably don’t want tax rates to be so high that revenues decline. But it seems many of them actually are motivated by a desire to punish success rather than a desire to maximize revenue for government.

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OECD Data: Higher Tax Rates Don’t Necessarily Mean Higher Tax Revenue

I participated in a debate yesterday on “tax havens” for the BBC World Service. If you read last month’s two-part series on the topic (here and here), you already know I’m a big defender of low-tax jurisdictions.

But it’s always interesting to interact with people with a different perspective (in this case, former Obama appointee David Carden and U.K. Professor Rita de la Feria).

As you might imagine, critics generally argue that tax havens should be eliminated so politicians have greater leeway to increase tax rates and finance bigger government. And if you listen to the entire interview, that’s an even bigger part of their argument now that there’s lots of coronavirus-related spending.

But for purposes of today’s column, I want to focus on what I said beginning at 49:10 of the interview.

I opined that it’s reasonably to issue debt to finance a temporary emergency and then gradually reduce the debt burden afterwards (similar to what happened during and after World War II, as well as during other points in history).

The most important part of my answer, however, was the discussion about how revenues didn’t decline when tax rates were slashed beginning in 1980.

Let’s first take a look at what happened to top tax rates for 24 industrialized nations from North America, Western Europe, and the Pacific Rim. As you can see, there’s been a big reduction in tax rates since 1980.

In the interview, I mentioned OECD data about taxes on income and profits, which can be found here (specifically data series 1000). So let’s see what happened to revenues during the period of falling tax rates.

Lo and behold, it turns out that revenue went up. Not just nominal revenues. Not just inflation-adjusted revenues. Tax revenues even increased as a share of gross domestic product.

In part, this is the Laffer Curve in action. Lower tax rates meant better incentives to engage in productive behavior. That meant higher levels of taxable income (the variable that should matter most).

For what it’s worth, I suspect that the lower tax rates – by themselves – did not cause tax revenue to rise. After all, there are many policies that determine the overall vitality of an economy.

But there’s no question that there’s a lot of “revenue feedback” when tax rates are changed.

The bottom line is that the folks advocating higher tax rates shouldn’t expect a windfall of tax revenue if they succeed in imposing class-warfare tax policy.

P.S. For the folks on the left who are motivated by spite rather than greed, it doesn’t matter if higher tax rates generate more money.

P.P.S. Interestingly, both the IMF and OECD have admitted, at least by inference, that lower corporate tax rates don’t result in lower tax revenues.

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A Tribute to Art Laffer

I’m a big fan of the Laffer Curve, which is simply a graphical representation of the common-sense notion that punitively high tax rates can result in less revenue because of reductions in the economy-wide level of work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.

This insight of supply-side economics is so obviously true that even Paul Krugman has acknowledged its veracity.

What’s far more important, though, is that Ronald Reagan grasped the importance of Art’s message. And he dramatically reduced tax rates on productive behavior during his presidency.

And those lower tax rates, combined with similar reforms by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, triggered a global reduction in tax rates that has helped boost growth and reduce poverty all around the world.

In other words, Art Laffer was a consequential man.

So it was great news that President Trump yesterday awarded Art with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Let’s look at some commentary on this development, starting with a column in the Washington Examiner by Fred Barnes.

When President Trump announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to economist Arthur Laffer, there were groans of dismay in Washington… Their reaction was hardly a surprise. Laffer is everything they don’t like in an economist. He’s an evangelist for tax cuts. He believes slashing tax rates is the key to economic growth and prosperity. And more often than not, he’s been right about this. Laffer emerged as an influential figure in the 1970s as the champion of reducing income tax rates. He was a key player in the Reagan cuts of 1981 that touched off an economic boom lasting two decades. …Laffer, 78, is not a favorite of conventional, predominantly liberal economists. Tax cuts leave the job of economic growth to the private sector. Liberal economists prefer to give government that job. Tax cuts are not on their agenda. Tax hikes are. …His critics would never admit to Laffer envy. But they show it by paying attention to what he says and to whom he’s affiliated. They rush to criticize him at any opportunity. …Laffer was right…about tax cuts and prosperity.

And here are some excerpts from a Bloomberg column by Professor Karl Smith of the University of North Carolina.

Most important, he highlights how supply-side economics provided a misery-minimizing way of escaping the inflation of the 1970s.

President Donald Trump’s decision to award Arthur Laffer the Presidential Medal of Freedom has met with no shortage of criticism… Laffer was a policy entrepreneur, and his..boldness was crucial in the development of what came to be known as the “Supply Side Revolution,” which even today is grossly underappreciated. In the 1980s, the U.S. economy avoided the malaise that afflicted Japan and much of Western Europe. The primary reason was supply-side economics. …Reducing inflation with minimal damage to the economy was the central goal of supply-side economics. …most economists agreed that inflation could be brought down with a severe enough recession. …Conservative economists argued that the long-term gain was worth that level of pain. Liberal economists argued that inflation was better contained with price and income controls. Robert Mundell, a future Nobel Laureate, argued that there was third way. Restricting the money supply, he said, would cause demand in the economy to contract, but making large tax cuts would cause demand to expand. If done together, these two strategies would cancel each other out, leaving room for supply-side factors to do their work. …Laffer suggested that permanent reductions in taxes and regulations would increase long-term economic growth. A faster-growing economy would increase foreign demand for U.S. financial assets, further raising the value of the dollar and reducing the price of foreign imports. These effects would speed the fall in inflation by increasing the supply of goods for sale. In the early 1980s, the so-called Mundell-Laffer hypothesis was put to the test — and it was, by and large, successful.

I’ve already written about how taming inflation was one of Reagan’s great accomplishments, and this column adds some meat to the bones of my argument.

And it’s worth noting that left-leaning economists thought it couldn’t be done. Professor Bryan Caplan shared this quote from Paul Samuelson.

Today’s inflation is chronic.  Its roots are deep in the very nature of the welfare state.  [Establishment of price stability through monetary policy would require] abolishing the humane society [and would] reimpose inequality and suffering not tolerated under democracy.  A fascist political state would be required to impose such a regime and preserve it.  Short of a military junta that imprisons trade union activists and terrorizes intellectuals, this solution to inflation is unrealistic–and, to most of us, undesirable.

It’s laughable to read that today, but during the Keynesian era of the 1970s, this kind of nonsense was very common (in addition to the Samuelson’s equally foolish observations on the supposed strength of the Soviet economy).

The bottom line is that Art Laffer and supply-side economics deserve credit for insights on monetary policy in addition to tax policy.

But since Art is most famous for the Laffer Curve, let’s close with a few additional observations on that part of supply-side economics.

Many folks on the left today criticize Art for being too aggressive about the location of the revenue-maximizing point of the Laffer Curve. In other words, they disagree with him on whether certain tax cuts will raise revenue or lose revenue.

While I think there’s very strong evidence that lower tax rates can increase revenue, I also think it doesn’t happen very often.

But I also think that debate doesn’t matter. Simply stated, I don’t want politicians to have more revenue, which means that I don’t want to be at the revenue-maximizing point of the Laffer Curve.

Moreover, there’s a lot of economic damage that occurs as tax rates approach that point, which is why I often cite academic research confirming that one additional dollar of tax revenue is associated with several dollars (or more!) of lost economic output.

Call me crazy, but I’m not willing to destroy $5 or $10 of private-sector income in order to increase Washington’s income by $1.

The bottom line is that the key insight of the Laffer Curve is that there’s a cost to raising tax rates, regardless of whether a nation is on the left side of the curve or the right side of the curve.

P.S. While I’m a huge fan of Art Laffer, that doesn’t mean universal agreement. I think he’s wrong in his analysis of destination-based state sales taxes. And I think he has a blind spot about the danger of a value-added tax.

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Debating Fiscal Policy and Red Ink for USA Today

The folks at USA Today invited me to opine on fiscal policy, specifically whether the 2017 tax cut was a mistake because of rising levels of red ink.

Here’s some of what I wrote on the topic, including the all-important point that deficits and debt are best understood as symptoms of the real problem of too much spending.

Now that there’s some much needed tax reform to boost American competitiveness, we’re supposed to suddenly believe that red ink is a national crisis. What’s ironic about all this pearl clutching is that the 2017 tax bill actually increases revenue beginning in 2027, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. …This isn’t to say that America’s fiscal house is in good shape, or that President Donald Trump should be immune from criticism. Indeed, the White House should be condemned for repeatedly busting the spending caps as part of bipartisan deals where Republicans get more defense spending, Democrats get more domestic spending and the American people get stuck with the bill. …The real lesson is that red ink is bad, but it’s only the symptom of the real problem of a federal budget that is too big and growing too fast.

I also pointed out that the only good solution for our fiscal problems is some sort of spending cap, similar to the successful systems in Hong Kong and Switzerland.

Heck, even left-leaning international bureaucracies such as the OECD and IMF have pointed out that spending caps are the only successful fiscal rule.

Now let’s look at a different perspective. USA Today also opined on the same topic (I was invited to provide a differing view). Here are excerpts from their editorial.

…more than anyone else, Laffer gave intellectual cover to the proposition that politicians can have their cake and eat it, too. …Laffer argued — on a cocktail napkin, according to economic lore, and elsewhere — that tax reductions would pay for themselves. These “supply side” cuts would stimulate growth so much, revenue would rise even as tax rates declined. This is, of course, rubbish. In the wake of the massive 2017 tax cuts, …the budget deficit is projected to run a little shy of $1 trillion… To run such large deficits a decade into a record economy recovery, is a massive problem because they will soar to dangerous heights the next time a recession strikes.

I think the column misrepresents the Laffer Curve, but let’s set that issue aside for another day.

The editorial also goes overboard in describing the 2017 tax cut as “massive.” As I noted in my column, that legislation actually raises revenue starting in 2027.

That being said, the main shortcoming of the USA Today editorial is that it doesn’t acknowledge that America’s long-run fiscal challenge (even for those who fixate on deficits and debt) is entirely driven by excessive spending growth.

Indeed, all you need to know is that nominal GDP is projected to grow by an average of about 4.0 percent annually over the next 30 years while the federal budget is projected to grow 5.2 percent per year.

This violates the Golden Rule of sensible fiscal policy.

And raising taxes almost certainly would make this bad outlook even worse since the economy would be weaker and politicians would jack up spending even further.

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The Rich Pay More with Lower Tax Rates

Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute is most famous for his Venn diagrams that expose hypocrisy and inconsistency.

• Taxation and incentives
• The War on Drugs
• Minimum wage
• Food and Drug Administration
• Consenting adults

But he also is famous for his charts.

And since I’m a big fan of sensible tax policy and the Laffer Curve, we’re going to share Mark’s new chart looking at the inverse relationship between the top tax rate and the share of taxes paid by the richest Americans.

Examining the chart, it quickly becomes evident that upper-income taxpayers started paying a much greater share of the tax burden after the Reagan tax cuts.

My left-leaning friends sometimes look at this data and complain that the rich are paying more of the tax burden only because they have grabbed a larger share of national income. And this means we should impose punitive tax rates.

But this argument is flawed for three reasons.

First, there is not a fixed amount of income. The success of a rich entrepreneur does not mean less income for the rest of us. Instead, it’s quite likely that all of us are better off because the entrepreneur created some product of service that we value. Indeed, data from the Census Bureau confirms that all income classes tend to rise and fall simultaneously.

Second, it’s not even accurate to say that the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer.

Third, one of the big fiscal lessons of the 1980s is that punitive tax rates on upper-income taxpayers backfire because investors, entrepreneurs, and business owners will choose to earn and report less taxable income.

For my contribution to this discussion, I want to elaborate on this final point.

When I give speeches, I sometimes discover that audiences don’t understand why rich taxpayers can easily control the amount of their taxable income.

And I greatly sympathize since I didn’t appreciate this point earlier in my career.

That’s because the vast majority of us get the lion’s share of our income from our employers. And when we get this so-called W-2 income, we don’t have much control over how much tax we pay. And we assume that this must be true for others.

But rich people are different. If you go the IRS’s Statistics of Income website and click on the latest data in Table 1.4, you’ll find that wages and salaries are only a small fraction of the income earned by wealthy taxpayers.

These high-income taxpayers may be tempting targets for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and the other peddlers of resentment, but they’re also very elusive targets.

That’s because it’s relatively easy – and completely legal – for them to control the timing, level, and composition of business and investment income.

When tax rates are low, this type of tax planning doesn’t make much sense. But as tax rates increase, rich people have an ever-growing incentive to reduce their taxable income and that creates a bonanza for lawyers, accountants, and financial planners.

Needless to say, there are many loopholes to exploit in a 75,000-page tax code.

P.S. There’s some very good evidence from Sweden confirming my point.

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Philadelphia’s Soda Tax Backfired (for Everyone other than Politicians)

I’ve periodically opined about why politicians should not try to control people’s behavior with discriminatory taxes, such as the ones being imposed on soda.

And I’ve cited some examples of how these taxes backfire.

• The big drop in soda purchases after a tax on sugary drinks was imposed in Berkeley.
• The big drop in soda sales after a big tax on sugary products in Mexico.
• The big drop in soda purchases expected to occur following Seattle’s new tax.

If the following headlines are any indication, we can add Philadelphia to that list.

For instances, this story from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Or this story from the local CBS affiliate.

These examples reinforce my view that it is not a good idea to let meddling politicians impose more taxes in an effort to control people’s behavior.

Some of my left-leaning friends periodically remind me, however, that there’s a difference between anecdotes and evidence. There’s a lot of truth to that cautionary observation.

To be sure, I could simply respond by saying a pattern is evident when a couple of anecdotes turns into dozens of anecdotes. And when dozens become hundreds, surely it’s possible to say the pattern shows causality.

That being said, it is good to have rigorous, statistics-based analysis if we really want to convince skeptics.

So let’s look at the results of some new academic research from scholars at Stanford, Northwestern, and the University of Minnesota. We’ll start with the abstract, which nicely summarizes their findings about the impact of Philadelphia’s big soda tax.

We analyze the impact of a tax on sweetened beverages, often referred to as a “soda tax,” using a unique data-set of prices, quantities sold and nutritional information across several thousand taxed and untaxed beverages for a large set of stores in Philadelphia and its surrounding area. We find that the tax is passed through at a rate of 75-115%, leading to a 30-40% price increase. Demand in the taxed area decreases dramatically by 42% in response to the tax. There is no significant substitution to untaxed beverages (water and natural juices), but cross-shopping at stores outside of Philadelphia completely o↵sets the reduction in sales within the taxed area. As a consequence, we find no significant reduction in calorie and sugar intake.

Here are some of their conclusions.

We draw several lessons about the effectiveness of local sweetened-beverage taxes from these analyses. First, the tax was ineffective at reducing consumption of unhealthy products. Second, in terms of revenue generation, the tax was only partly effective due to consumers substituting to stores outside of Philadelphia. Third, low income households are less likely to engage in cross-shopping, and instead are more likely to continue to purchase taxed products at a higher price at stores in Philadelphia. The lower propensity for low income households to avoid the tax through cross-shopping leads to a relatively larger tax burden for those households. In summary, the tax does not lead to a shift in consumption towards healthier products, it affects low income households more severely, and it is limited in its ability to raise revenue.

If you’re wondering why consumers responded so strongly, here’s a chart from the study showing the price difference after the tax was imposed.

The bottom numbers in Figure 3 show that some sales still occurred in the city, but a persistent gap between city sales and suburban sales appeared.

And here’s what happened to sales inside the city (taxed) and outside the city (untaxed).

Wow. This data makes me wonder if suburban sellers will start contributing to the Philadelphia politicians who have generated this windfall?

Others have noticed how the tax is hurting rather than helping.

The Wall Street Journal opined about the failure of Philly’s soda tax.

When Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to pass a soda tax in 2016, Mayor Jim Kenney said it would improve public health while funding universal pre-K. Two years in, the policy hasn’t delivered on that elite ideological goal. But the tax has come at the expense of working people… On Jan. 2, Brown’s Super Stores announced the closure of a ShopRite on Haverford Avenue. The supermarket is close to the city limit, and customers discovered they could avoid the soda tax by shopping outside Philly. …the once-profitable store began losing about $1 million a year. …That means fewer opportunities for workers with a criminal record. Mr. Brown’s supermarkets employ more than 600 of them, with the majority in Philadelphia. Some of the ex-cons have become his most-valued employees.

And Kyle Smith explained in National Review how the tax backfired.

Philadelphia’s outlandish soda tax is what Democratic-party politics looks like when it lets its freak flag fly. So many classic elements are there: (failed) social engineering and “think of the children!” on one side, paid for with a punitive tax on poor people and destroyed businesses, which means destroyed jobs, which in turn means lives upended. …Now that beer is, in some cases, cheaper than soda in Philadelphia, alcohol sales are up sharply. …the total loss attributable to the tax in sales of all items was $300,000 a month per store. Other, untaxed drinks also suffered sales declines within the city, suggesting people were simply saving up their shopping trips for when they left town.

I don’t feel compelled to add much to what’s been cited.

Though I will cite a headline from the Seattle Times to reinforce one of the points in the academic study about consumers bearing the cost of the tax rather than the soda companies.

And my one modest contribution to all this analysis is this comparison of the winners and loser from Philadelphia’s new tax.

For what it’s worth, similar comparisons could be developed for just about every action by every government. Academics call this “public choice” while ordinary people realize it’s just common sense.

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OECD Data on Corporate Taxation Inadvertently Provides Strong Evidence for the Laffer Curve

Like most taxpayer-supported international bureaucracies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has a statist orientation.

The Paris-based OECD is particularly bad on fiscal policy and it is infamous for its efforts to prop up Europe’s welfare states by hindering tax competition.

It even has a relatively new “BEPS” project that is explicitly designed so that politicians can grab more money from corporations.

So it’s safe to say that the OECD is not a hotbed of libertarian thought on tax policy, much less a supporter of pro-growth business taxation.

Which makes it all the more significant that it just announced that supporters of free markets are correct about the Laffer Curve and corporate tax rates.

The OECD doesn’t openly acknowledge that this is the case, of course, but let’s look at key passages from a Tuesday press release.

Taxes paid by companies remain a key source of government revenues, especially in developing countries, despite the worldwide trend of falling corporate tax rates over the past two decades… In 2016, corporate tax revenues accounted for 13.3% of total tax revenues on average across the 88 jurisdictions for which data is available. This figure has increased from 12% in 2000. …OECD analysis shows that a clear trend of falling statutory corporate tax rates – the headline rate faced by companies – over the last two decades. The database shows that the average combined (central and sub-central government) statutory tax rate fell from 28.6% in 2000 to 21.4% in 2018.

So tax rates have dramatically fallen but tax revenue has actually increased. I guess many of the self-styled experts are wrong on the Laffer Curve.

By the way, whoever edits the press releases for the OECD might want to consider changing “despite” to “because of” (writers at the Washington Post, WTNH, Irish-based Independent, and Wall Street Journal need similar lessons in causality).

Let’s take a more detailed look at the data. Here’s a chart from the OECD showing how corporate rates have dropped just since 2000. Pay special attention to the orange line, which shows the rate for developed nations.

I applaud this big drop in tax rates. It’s been good for the world economy and good for workers.

And the chart only tells part of the story. The average corporate rate for OECD nations was 48 percent back in 1980.

In other words, tax rates have fallen by 50 percent in the developed world.

Yet if you look at this chart, which I prepared using the OECD’s own data, it shows that revenues actually have a slight upward trend.

I’ll close with a caveat. The Laffer Curve is very important when looking at corporate taxation, but that doesn’t mean it has an equally powerful impact when looking at other taxes.

It all depends on how sensitive various taxpayers are to changes in tax rates.

Business taxes have a big effect because companies can easily choose where to invest and how much to invest.

The Laffer Curve also is very important when looking at proposals (such as the nutty idea from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) to increase tax rates on the rich. That’s because upper-income taxpayers have a lot of control over the timing, level, and composition of business and investment income.

But changes in tax rates on middle-income earners are less likely to have a big effect because most of us get a huge chunk of our compensation from wages and salaries. Similarly, changes in sales taxes and value-added taxes are unlikely to have big effects.

Increasing those taxes is still a bad idea, of course. I’m simply making the point that not all tax increases are equally destructive (and not all tax cuts generate equal amounts of additional growth).

P.S. The International Monetary Fund also accidentally provided evidence about corporate taxes and the Laffer Curve. And there was also a little-noticed OECD study last year making the same point.

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Trudeau’s Class-Warfare Tax Hike Produces Less Revenue

I wrote yesterday about a handful of strange legal developments in Canada.

In a display of balance, however, I noted in my conclusion that Canada in recent decades has been “very sensible” with regard to economic issues (spending restraint, welfare reform, corporate tax reform, bank bailouts, regulatory budgeting, the tax treatment of saving, school choice, and privatization of air traffic control).

But “very sensible” is not the same as “totally sensible.” Especially not if you count recent years.

The nation’s current top politician, Justin Trudeau (a.k.a., Prime Minister Zoolander), increased the top tax rate from 29 percent to 33 percent after taking office in late 2015.

It appears, though, that he wasn’t aware of a concept known as the Laffer Curve (or, like some folks on the left, maybe he simply didn’t care).

In the real world, however, it turns out that increasing tax rates is not the same as increasing tax revenue.

Here are some excerpts from a story in the Globe and Mail.

The Liberal government’s tax on Canada’s top 1 per cent failed to produce the promised billions in new revenue in its first year, as high-income earners actually paid $4.6-billion less in federal taxes. …The latest available tax records show that revenue from Canadians earning about $140,000 or more – which had previously been the fourth and highest tax bracket – dropped by $4.6-billion in 2016, the first full year that the Liberal tax changes were in effect. Further, 30,340 fewer Canadians reported incomes in that range for 2016 compared with the year before. …The new top bracket with a 33-per-cent tax rate was predicted to raise about $3-billion a year in new revenue… Critics of the Liberal plan say the CRA’s 2016 numbers justify their concern that a new top tax bracket hurts Canadian efforts to boost competitiveness and attract top talent.

It’s quite possible, as noted in the article, that some of the foregone revenue might be the result of one-time changes, such as upper-income taxpayers shifting income from 2016 to 2015 (rich people do have considerable control over the timing, level, and composition of their income).

A report from Global News reviews a report about the degree to which revenues dropped for transitory reasons.

The Liberal government’s 2016 tax hike on Canada’s top one per cent not only failed to yield the promised billions, but resulted in a net revenue loss for government coffers… After adjusting for economic changes and one-time factors, the paper estimates, based on 2016 tax data, that the Liberals’ new tax bracket for top earners creates $1.2 billion in new revenue for the federal government but a $1.3 billion loss for provincial governments. …Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office, however, has maintained that the revenue drop for 2016 was a one-off event. …But an analysis of the data that adjusts for the impact of the dividends maneuver and economic factors still shows that the tax hike would have fallen far short of the hype… Studies have shown that top earners are more likely than lower-income taxpayers to react to tax increases by reducing their taxable income. This may be because the wealthy have access to more sophisticated tax advice, are more easily able to shift assets to lower-tax jurisdictions or can afford to simply decide to work less given that they get to keep less of their money.

Much of the data in this story came from an analysis by the C.D. Howe Institute.

Here’s the key chart from that study, which disentangles the one-off changes and permanent changes caused by the higher tax rate.

The bottom line is that the experts at the C.D. Howe Institute believe that the central government eventually will collect more revenue from the higher tax rate, but:

1. The revenue will be less than projected by static revenue estimates because of permanently lower levels of taxable income.
2. The added revenue for the central government is more than offset by lower tax receipts for subnational levels of government.

In other words, Trudeau’s tax hike was a big mistake. The only tangible results are that the private sector is now smaller and the country is less competitive.

For what it’s worth, I view the lack of additional tax revenue as a silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. Maybe, just maybe, this will put a damper on some of Trudeau’s irresponsible plans for more spending.

P.S. For those interested in Canadian fiscal policy, I shared some research last year about the implications of provincial changes in tax policy.

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Helping the Left and the Right Understand the Laffer Curve

As illustrated by this video tutorial, I’m a big advocate of the Laffer Curve.

I very much want to help policy makers understand (especially at the Joint Committee on Taxation) that there’s not a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. In other words, you don’t double tax revenue by doubling tax rates.

Having worked on this issue for decades, I can state with great confidence that there are two groups that make my job difficult.

• The folks who don’t like pro-growth tax policy and thus claim that changes in tax policy have no impact on the economy.
• The folks who do like pro-growth tax policy and thus claim that every tax cut will “pay for itself” because of faster growth.

Which was my message in this clip from a recent interview.

For all intents and purposes, I’m Goldilocks in the debate over the Laffer Curve. Except instead of stating that the porridge is too hot or too cold, my message is that it is that changes in tax policy generally lead to more taxable income, but the growth in income is usually not enough to offset the impact of lower tax rates.

In other words, some revenue feedback but not 100 percent revenue feedback.

Yes, some tax cuts do pay for themselves. But they tend to be tax cuts on people (such as investors and entrepreneurs) who have a lot of control over the timing, level, and composition of their income.

And, as I said in the interview, I think the lower corporate tax rate will have substantial supply-side effects (see here and here for evidence). This is because a business can make big changes in response to a new tax law, whereas people like you and me don’t have the same flexibility.

But I don’t want this column to be nothing but theory, so here’s a news report from Estonia on the Laffer Curve in action.

After Estonia raised its alcohol excise tax rates considerably in 2017, Estonian daily Postimees has estimated that the target of the money the alcohol excise tax would bring into state coffers could have been missed by at least EUR 40 million. …Initially, in the state budget of 2017, the ministry had been planned that proceeds from the alcohol excise tax would bring EUR 276.4 million, but last summer, it cut the forecast to EUR 237.5 million.

I guess I’ll make this story Part VII in my collection of examples designed to educate my friends on the left (here’s Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI).

But there’s a much more important point I want to make.

The fact that most tax increases produce more revenue is definitely not an argument in favor of higher tax rates.

That argument is wrong in part because government already is far too large. But it’s also wrong because we should consider the health and vitality of the private sector. Here’s some of what I wrote about some academic research in 2012.

…this study implies that the government would reduce private-sector taxable income by about $20 for every $1 of new tax revenue. Does that seem like good public policy? Ask yourself what sort of politicians are willing to destroy so much private sector output to get their greedy paws on a bit more revenue. What about capital taxation? According to the second chart, the government could increase the tax rate from about 40 percent to 70 percent before getting to the revenue-maximizing point. But that 75 percent increase in the tax rate wouldn’t generate much tax revenue, not even a 10 percent increase. So the question then becomes whether it’s good public policy to destroy a large amount of private output in exchange for a small increase in tax revenue. Once again, the loss of taxable income to the private sector would dwarf the new revenue for the political class.

The bottom line is that I don’t think it’s a good trade to reduce the private sector by any amount simply to generate more money for politicians.

P.S. I’m also Goldilocks when considering the Rahn Curve.

P.P.S. For what it’s worth, Paul Krugman (sort of) agrees with me about the Laffer Curve.

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Remarkable OECD Study on Corporate Tax Rates, Corporate Tax Revenue, and the Laffer Curve

Last month, I revealed that even Paul Krugman agreed with the core principle of the Laffer Curve.

Today, we have another unlikely ally. Regular readers know that I’m not a big fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Paris-based international bureaucracy routinely urges higher tax burdens, both in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

But the professional economists who work for the OECD are much better than the political appointees who push a statist agenda.

So when I saw that three of them (Oguzhan Akgun, David Bartolini, and Boris Cournède) produced a study estimating the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues, I was very curious to see the results.

They start by openly acknowledging that high tax rates can backfire.

This paper investigates the capacity of governments to raise revenue by assessing the ways in which tax receipts respond to rates… Revenue returns from tax increases can be expected to decrease with the level of tax rates, because higher rates exacerbate disincentives to produce and raise incentives to avoid taxation. These two main channels can therefore imply that tax receipts rise less than proportionately with rates and may peak at a given point.

Given the OECD’s love affair with higher tax burdens, this is a remarkable admission about an important limit on the ability of governments to grab revenue.

Their estimate of the actual revenue-maximizing burden is almost secondary. But nonetheless still noteworthy.

According to the estimated coefficients in model 5 of Table 3, an EMTR of 25% maximises CIT revenue.

Not that different from the estimates produced at the Tax Foundation and American Enterprise Institute.

Here’s a chart showing the revenue-maximizing level of tax, which varies depending on the degree to which a country has close economic ties with the rest of the world.

Interestingly, the study openly admits that tax competition plays a big role.

Trade openness is found to reduce CIT revenue. The latter is consistent with…international tax competition, which is likely to increase the effects of tax rates on the location of firms or more broadly of their profit-generating activities.

Sadly, the political types at the OECD have a “BEPS” scheme that is designed to curtail tax competition.

Which is a very good argument for why tax competition should be allowed to flourish.

But let’s not digress. Here’s another remarkable admission in the study. The OECD economists point out that it is not a good idea for governments to try to maximize revenue.

Estimates of revenue-maximising rates should not be seen as policy objectives or recommendations, as they imply high levels of economic distortions or tax avoidance.

Amen. I cited a study in 2012 showing that a revenue-maximizing tax rate might destroy as much as $20 of private sector output for every $1 collected by government. Only Bernie Sanders would think that’s a good deal.

Last but not least, the study even points out a class-warfare approach is misguided when looking at personal income taxes.

More progressive broadly defined personal income taxes generally yield more revenue, but very strong progressivity is associated with lower revenue.

Another wise observation.

The bottom line is that high tax rates of any kind are not a good idea.

P.S. The International Monetary Fund inadvertently provided very strong evidence about the Laffer Curve and corporate taxes.

P.P.S. An occasional good study doesn’t change my belief that the OECD no longer should be subsidized by American taxpayers.

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Paul Krugman, Supply-Side Economist

I’ve been writing about the Laffer Curve for decades, making the simple point that there’s not a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue.

To help people understand, I ask them to imagine that they owned a restaurant and decided to double prices. Would they expect twice as much revenue?

Of course not, because people respond. Customers would go to other restaurants, or decide to eat at home. Depending on how customers reacted, the restaurant might even wind up with less revenue.

Well, that’s how the Laffer Curve works. When tax rates change, that alters incentives to engage in productive behavior (i.e., how much income they earn). In other words, to figure out tax revenue, you have to look at taxable income in addition to tax rates.

For some odd reason, this is a controversial issue.

My wayward buddy Bruce Bartlett posted a video on Facebook from Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal show. The goal was to mock the Laffer Curve, and here’s the part of the video featuring economists dismissing the concept as a “joke.”

Wow, that’s pretty damning. Economists from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and the University of Chicago are on the other side of the issue.

Should I give up and retract all my writings and analysis?

Fortunately, that won’t be necessary since I have an unexpected ally. As shown in this excerpt from the video, Paul Krugman agrees with me about the Laffer Curve.

And Krugman’s not alone. Many other left-leaning economists also admit there is a Laffer Curve.

To be sure, as Krugman noted, there is considerable disagreement about the revenue-maximizing tax rate. Folks on the left often say tax rates could be 70 percent while folks on the right think the revenue-maximizing rate is much lower.

I have two thoughts about this debate. First, if the revenue-maximizing rate is 70 percent, then why did the IRS collect so much additional revenue from upper-income taxpayers when Reagan lowered the top rate from 70 percent to 28 percent?

Second, I don’t want to maximize revenue for government. That’s why I always make sure my depictions of the Laffer Curve show both the revenue-maximizing point and the growth-maximizing point. At the risk of stating the obvious, I prefer the growth-maximizing point.

The bottom line is that I think the revenue-maximizing point is probably closer to 30 percent, as shown in my chart. Especially in the long run.

But I wouldn’t care if the revenue-maximizing rate was actually 50 percent. Politicians should only collect the relatively small amount of revenue that is needed to finance the growth-maximizing level of government spending.

P.S. As tax rates get closer and closer to the revenue-maximizing point, that means an increasing amount of economic damage per dollar collected.

P.P.S. Paul Krugman is also right that value-added taxes are not good for exports.

Addendum: This post was updated on August 12 to add the clip of selected economists mocking the Laffer Curve.

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Pro-Growth Tax Reform: Evidence from Canadian Provinces

In the past few years, I’ve bolstered the case for lower tax rates by citing country-specific research from Italy, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Israel, Portugal, South Africa, the United States, Denmark, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom.

Now let’s look to the north.

Two Canadian scholars investigated the impact of provincial tax policy changes in Canada. Here are the issues they investigated.

The tax cuts introduced by the provincial government of British Columbia (BC) in 2001 are an important example… The tax reform was introduced in two stages. In an attempt to make the BC’s economy more competitive, the government reduced the corporate income tax (CIT) rate initially by 3.0 percentage points with an additional 1.5 percentage point reduction in 2005. The government also cut the personal income tax (PIT) rate by about 25 percent. …The Canadian provincial governments’ tax policies provide a good natural experiment for the study of the effects of tax rates on growth. …The principal objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of taxation on growth using data from 10 Canadian provinces during 1977-2006. We also explore the relationship between tax rates and total tax revenue. We use the empirical results to assess the revenue and growth rate effects of the 2001 British Columbia’s incentive-based tax cuts.

And here are the headline results.

The results of this paper indicate that higher taxes are associated with lower private investment and slower economic growth. Our analysis suggests that a 10 percentage point cut in the statutory corporate income tax rate is associated with a temporary 1 to 2 percentage point increase in per capita GDP growth rate. Similarly, a 10 percentage point reduction in the top marginal personal income tax rate is related to a temporary one percentage point increase in the growth rate. … The results suggest that the tax cuts can result in significant long-run output gains. In particular, our simulation results indicate that the 4.5 percentage point CIT rate cut will boost the long-run GDP per capita in BC by 18 percent compared to the level that would have prevailed in the absence of the CIT tax cut. …The result indicates that a 10 percentage point reduction in the corporate marginal tax rate is associated with a 5.76 percentage point increase in the private investment to GDP ratio. Similarly, a 10 percentage point cut in the top personal income tax rate is related to a 5.96 percentage point rise in the private investment to GDP ratio.

The authors look specifically at what happened when British Columbia adopted supply-side tax reforms.

…In this section, we attempt to gauge the magnitude of the growth effects of the CIT and PIT rate cuts in BC in 2001… the growth rate effect of the tax cut is temporary, but long-lasting. Figure 2 shows the output with the CIT rate cut relative to the no-tax cut output over the 120 years horizon. Our model indicates that in the long-run per capita output would be 17.6 percent higher with the 4.5 percentage point CIT rate cut. …We have used a similar procedure to calculate the effects of the five percentage point reduction in the PIT rate in BC. …The solid line in Figure 3 shows simulated relative output with the PIT rate cut compared to the output with the base line growth rate of 1.275. Our model indicates that per capita output would be 7.6 percent higher in the long run with the five percentage point PIT rate cut.

Here’s their estimate of the long-run benefits of a lower corporate tax rate.

And here’s what they found when estimating the pro-growth impact of a lower tax rate on households.

In both cases, lower tax rates lead to more economic output.

Which means that lower tax rates result in more taxable income (the core premise of the Laffer Curve).

The amount of tax revenue that a provincial government collects depends on both its tax rates and tax bases. Thus one major concern that policy makers have in cutting tax rates is the implication of tax cuts for government tax receipts. …The true cost of raising a tax rate to taxpayers is not just the direct cost of but also the loss of output caused by changes in taxpayers’ economic decisions. The Marginal Cost of Public Funds (MCF) measures the loss created by the additional distortion in the allocation of resources when an additional dollar of tax revenue is raised through a tax rate increase. …if…government is on the negatively-sloped section of its present value revenue Laffer curve…, a tax rate reduction would increase the present value of the government’s tax revenues.

And the Canadian research determined that, measured by present value, the lower corporate tax rate will increase tax revenue.

…computations indicate that including the growth rate effects substantially raises our view of the MCF for a PIT. Our computations therefore support previous analysis which indicates that it is much more costly to raise revenue through a PIT rate increase than through a sales tax rate increase and that there are potentially large efficiency gains if a province switches from an income tax to a sales tax. When the growth rate effects of the CIT are included in the analysis, …a CIT rate reduction would increase the present value of the government’s tax revenues. A CIT rate cut would make taxpayers better off and the government would have more funds to spend on public services or cut other taxes. Therefore our computations provide strong support for cutting corporate income tax rates.

Needless to say, if faced with the choice between “more funds to spend” and “cut other taxes,” I greatly prefer the latter. Which is why I worry that people learn the wrong lesson when I point out that the rich paid a lot more tax after Reagan lowered the top rate in the 1980s.

The goal is to generate more prosperity for people, not more revenue for government. So if a tax cut produces more revenue, the immediate response should be to drop the rate even further.

But I’m digressing. The point of today’s column is simply to augment my collection of case studies showing that better tax policy produces better economic performance.

P.S. The research from Canada also helps to explain the positive effect of decentralization and federalism. British Columbia had the leeway to adopt supply-side reforms because the central government in Canada is somewhat limited in size and scope. That’s even more true in Switzerland (where we see the best results), and somewhat true about the United States.

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The “Khaldun Curve”

I’ve written dozens of columns about the Laffer Curve and its implications.

My favorite may be the one that pointed out why it generally is misguided to raise tax rates even if the government would collect more revenue (i.e., don’t give politicians $1 if it means reducing the private economy by $5).

And I’m always reminding people that the goal is to maximize growth rather than revenue.

I’ve even written about how the Laffer Curve relates to issues as diverse as sex and ISIS.

But I haven’t paid much attention to the history of the issue. Now, thanks to some great research from Nima Sanandaji, we can investigate that topic.

…the Laffer Curve has been used by supporters of low taxes around the world to reinforce their ideas. …it has helped to inspire a downward shift in taxation. Ronald Reagan’s administration introduced massive changes, which dropped the marginal tax rate to 28 percent. …even the proponents of high tax policy are aware of Laffer’s warnings: there is a limit to how high taxes can be raised.

All that’s true.

Reagan’s lower tax rates did produce a windfall of tax revenue from the rich.

And even folks on the left admit that the revenue-maximizing tax rate is below 100 percent, so they acknowledge the Laffer Curve is real.

But what many people don’t know is that the concept of the Laffer Curve existed long before Art drew his famous curve on a napkin.

Nima points to the example of Ibn Khaldun.

…Laffer’s theory was far from new. …Laffer has himself explained that he didn’t invent the curve, but took it from Ibn Khaldun, a 14th-century Muslim, North African philosopher. …Born in 14th-century Tunisia, Khaldun was a prominent scholar and one of the founders of economics and social sciences. Khaldun believed that a just government should only, in accordance with Islamic law, impose low taxes. …However, rulers tend to increase the tax to benefit themselves. High taxes hurt commerce and trade. When tax rates are raised to pay for a bloated government, it will finally cause the tax base to shrink so much that the government cannot meet its obligations. …at this point the state would often implode under its own weight, leading to a period of chaos and the rise of a new state.

Here’s Khaldun’s most famous statement on tax rates and tax revenue.

By the way, there were plenty of people between Khaldun and Laffer who understood why punitive tax rates are foolish, including Alexander Hamilton and John Maynard Keynes(!).

P.S. Perhaps because they’re exposed to the real-world impact, America’s CPAs also understand the Laffer Curve is very real.

P.P.S. Nima has just written a fascinating new book, The Birthplace of Capitalism – The Middle East, which can be ordered here.

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California (Hopefully) Learns a Lesson about Marijuana Taxes and the Laffer Curve

I wanted California to decriminalize marijuana because I believe in freedom. Smoking pot may not be a wise choice in many cases, but it’s not the role of government to dictate private behavior so long as people aren’t violating the rights of others.

Politicians, by contrast, are interested in legalization because they see dollar signs. They want to tax marijuana consumption to they can have more money to spend (I half-joked that this was a reason to keep it illegal, but that’s a separate issue).

Lawmakers need to realize, though, that the Laffer Curve is very real. They may not like it, but there’s very strong evidence that imposing lots of taxes does not necessarily mean collecting lots of revenue. Especially when tax rates are onerous.

Here’s some of what the AP recently reported about California’s experiment with taxing pot.

So far, the sale of legal marijuana in California isn’t bringing in the green stuff. Broad legal sales kicked off on Jan. 1. State officials had estimated California would bank $175 million from excise and cultivation taxes by the end of June. But estimates released Tuesday by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office show just $34 million came in between January and March. …it’s unlikely California will reap $175 million by midyear.

And here are some excerpts from a KHTS story.

Governor Jerry Brown’s January budget proposal predicted that $175 million would pour into the state’s coffers from excise and cultivation taxes…analysts believe revenue will be significantly lower… Some politicians argue high taxes are to blame for the revenue shortfalls preventing that prediction from becoming reality, saying the black market is “undercutting” the legal one. …The current taxes on legal marijuana businesses include a 15 percent excise tax on purchases of all cannabis and cannabis products, including medicinal marijuana. The law also added a $9.25 tax for every ounce of bud grown and a $2.75-an-ounce tax on dried cannabis leaves for cultivators.

These results should not have been a surprise.

I’ve been warning – over and over again – that politicians need to pay attention to the Laffer Curve. Simply stated, high tax rates don’t necessarily produce high revenues if taxpayers have the ability to alter their behavior.

That happens with income taxes. It happens with consumption taxes.

And it happens with taxes on marijuana.

Moreover, it’s not just cranky libertarians who make this point. Vox isn’t a site know for rabid support of supply-side economics, so it’s worth noting some of the findings from a recent article on pt taxes.

After accounting for substitution between products by consumers, we find that the tax-inclusive price faced by consumers for identical products increased by 2.3%. We find that the quantity purchased decreased by 0.95%…, implying a short-term price elasticity of -0.43. However, over time, the magnitude of the quantity response significantly increases, and our estimates suggest that the price elasticity of demand is about negative one within two weeks of the reform. We conclude that Washington, the state with the highest marijuana taxes in the country, is near the peak of the Laffer curve – further increases in tax rates may not increase revenue. …tax revenue has historically been one of the many arguments in favour of legalising marijuana…the optimal taxation of marijuana should be designed to take into account responses…excessive taxation might prop up the very black markets that legal marijuana is intended to supplant. As additional jurisdictions consider legalising marijuana and debate over optimal policy design, these trade-offs should be explored and taken into account.

Let’s close by reviewing some interesting passages from a McClatchey report, starting with some observations about the harmful impact of excessive taxes.

Owners of legalized cannabis operations face a range of challenges… But taxes – local, state, federal – present a particular headache. They are a big reason why, in California and other states, only a small percentage of cannabis growers and retailers have chosen to get licensed and come out of the shadows. …In a March report, Fitch Ratings suggested that California may not realize the tax revenue – $1 billion a year – the state projected when Proposition 64, a legalization initiative, was put before voters in 2016. “While it is still too early to assess California’s revenue performance, comparatively high taxes on legal cannabis will likely continue to divert sales to illegal markets, reducing potential tax collections,” Fitch said in its report. …Add it all up, and state-legal cannabis in some parts of California could be taxed at an effective rate of 45 percent, Fitch said in a report last year.

Interestingly, even politicians realize they need to adapt to the harsh reality of the Laffer Curve.

Some state lawmakers blame the taxation for creating a price gap between legal and illegal pot that could doom California’s regulated market. Last month, Assembly members Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale, and Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, introduced legislation, AB 3157, that would reduce the state marijuana sales tax rate from 15 percent to 11 percent, and suspend all cultivation taxes until June 2021.

And I can’t resist including one final passage that has nothing to do with taxes. Instead, it’s a reference to the lingering effect of Obama’s dreadful Operation Choke Point.

Davies owns Canna Care, a medical marijuana dispensary in Sacramento. Like other state-legal cannabis businesses nationwide, her pot shop operates largely with cash. Most banks won’t transact with enterprises deemed illegal by the U.S. government. That forces Davies to stuff $10,000 in bills into her purse each month… even lawyers who represent state-legal marijuana businesses face financial risks. Sacramento lawyer Khurshid Khoja recently lost his two bank accounts with Umpqua Bank, after Umpqua started asking him about his state-legal cannabis clients.

The good news is that Trump has partially eased this awful policy. The bad news is that he only took a small step in the right direction.

But let’s get back to our main topic. I’ve written several times on whether our friends on the left are capable of learning about the Laffer Curve. Especially in cases when they imposed a tax in hopes of changing behavior!

• The big drop in soda purchases after a tax on sugary drinks was imposed in Berkeley.
• The big drop in home sales after a tax was imposed in Vancouver on purchases by foreigners.
• The big drop in tobacco sales after a big increase in D.C.’s tobacco tax.
• The big drop in soda purchases after a tax was imposed in Philadelphia.
• The big drop in sales of high-end housing after a big tax was imposed in the United Kingdom.
• The big drop in soda sales after a big tax on sugary products in Mexico.

What’s happening in California with pot taxes is simply the latest example.

And I’m hoping leftists will apply the lesson to taxes on things that we don’t want to discourage – such as work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.

P.S. I’ve pointed out that some leftists want high tax rates on income even if no money is collected. That’s because their real goal is punishing success. I wonder if there are some conservatives who are pushing punitive marijuana taxes because they want to discourage “sin” rather than collect revenue.

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Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1920s?

Last November, I wrote about the lessons we should learn from tax policy in the 1950s and concluded that very high tax rates impose a very high price.

About six months before that, I shared lessons about tax policy in the 1980s and pointed out that Reaganomics was a recipe for prosperity.

Now let’s take a look at another decade.

Amity Shlaes, writing for the City Journal, discusses the battle between advocates of growth and the equality-über-alles crowd.

…progressives have their metrics wrong and their story backward. The geeky Gini metric fails to capture the American economic dynamic: in our country, innovative bursts lead to great wealth, which then moves to the rest of the population. Equality campaigns don’t lead automatically to prosperity; instead, prosperity leads to a higher standard of living and, eventually, in democracies, to greater equality. The late Simon Kuznets, who posited that societies that grow economically eventually become more equal, was right: growth cannot be assumed. Prioritizing equality over markets and growth hurts markets and growth and, most important, the low earners for whom social-justice advocates claim to fight.

Amity analyzes four important decades in the 20th century, including the 1930s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Her entire article is worth reading, but I want to focus on what she wrote about the 1920s. Especially the part about tax policy.

She starts with a description of the grim situation that President Harding and Vice President Coolidge inherited.

…the early 1920s experienced a significant recession. At the end of World War I, the top income-tax rate stood at 77 percent. …in autumn 1920, two years after the armistice, the top rate was still high, at 73 percent. …The high tax rates, designed to corral the resources of the rich, failed to achieve their purpose. In 1916, 206 families or individuals filed returns reporting income of $1 million or more; the next year, 1917, when Wilson’s higher rates applied, only 141 families reported income of $1 million. By 1921, just 21 families reported to the Treasury that they had earned more than a million.

Wow. Sort of the opposite of what happened in the 1980s, when lower rates resulted in more rich people and lots more taxable income.

But I’m digressing. Let’s look at what happened starting in 1921.

Against this tide, Harding and Coolidge made their choice: markets first. Harding tapped the toughest free marketeer on the public landscape, Mellon himself, to head the Treasury. …The Treasury secretary suggested…a lower rate, perhaps 25 percent, might foster more business activity, and so generate more revenue for federal coffers. …Harding and Mellon got the top rate down to 58 percent. When Harding died suddenly in 1923, Coolidge promised to “bend all my energies” to pushing taxes down further. …After winning election in his own right in 1924, Coolidge joined Mellon, and Congress, in yet another tax fight, eventually prevailing and cutting the top rate to the target 25 percent.

And how did this work?

…the tax cuts worked—the government did draw more revenue than predicted, as business, relieved, revived. The rich earned more than the rest—the Gini coefficient rose—but when it came to tax payments, something interesting happened. The Statistics of Income, the Treasury’s database, showed that the rich now paid a greater share of all taxes. Tax cuts for the rich made the rich pay taxes.

To elaborate, let’s cite one of my favorite people. Here are a couple of charts from a study I wrote for the Heritage Foundation back in 1996.

The first one shows that the rich sent more money to Washington when tax rates were reduced and also paid a larger share of the tax burden.

And here’s a look at the second chart, which illustrates how overall revenues increased (red line) as the top tax rate fell (blue).

So why did revenues climb after tax rates were reduced?

Because the private economy prospered. Here are some excerpts about economic performance in the 1920s from a very thorough 1982 report from the Joint Economic Committee.

Economic conditions rapidly improved after the act became law, lifting the United States out of the severe 1920-21 recession. Between 1921 and 1922, real GNP (measured in 1958 dollars) jumped 15.8 percent, from $127.8 billion to $148 billion, while personal savings rose from $1.59 billion to $5.40 -billion (from 2.6 percent to 8.9 percent of disposable personal income). Unemployment declined significantly, commerce and the construction industry boomed, and railroad traffic recovered. Stock prices and new issues increased, with prices up over 20 percent by year-end 1922.8 The Federal Reserve Board’s index of manufacturing production (series P-13-17) expanded 25 percent. …This trend was sustained through much of 1923, with a 12.1 percent boost in GNP to $165.9 billion. Personal savings increased to $7.7 billion (11 percent of disposable income)… Between 1924 ‘and 1925 real GNP grew 8.4 percent, from $165.5 billion to $179.4 billion. In this same period the amount of personal savings rose from an already impressive $6.77 billion to about $8.11 billion (from 9.5 percent to 11 percent of personal disposable income). The unemployment rated dropped 27.3 percents interest rates fell, and railroad traffic moved at near record levels. From June 1924 when the act became law to the end of that year the stock price index jumped almost 19 percent. This index increased another 23 percent between year-end 1924 and year-end 1925, while the amount of non-financial stock issues leapt 100 percent in the same period. …From 1925 to 1926 real GNP grew from $179.4 billion to $190 billion. The index of output per man-hour increased and the unemployment rate fell over 50 percent, from 4.0 percent to 1.9 percent. The Federal Reserve Board’s index of manufacturing production again rose, and stock prices of nonfinancial issues increased about 5 percent.

Now for some caveats.

I’ve pointed out many times that taxes are just one of many policies that impact economic performance.

It’s quite likely that some of the good news in the 1920s was the result of other factors, such as spending discipline under both Harding and Coolidge.

And it’s also possible that some of the growth was illusory since there was a bubble in the latter part of the decade. And everything went to hell in a hand basket, of course, once Hoover took over and radically expanded the size and scope of government.

But all the caveats in the world don’t change the fact that Americans – both rich and poor – immensely benefited when punitive tax rates were slashed.

P.S. Since Ms. Shlaes is Chairman of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, I suggest you click here and here to learn more about the 20th century’s best or second-best President.

P.P.S. I assume I don’t need to identify Coolidge’s rival for the top spot.

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The Greek Experiment: Can an Economy Be Wiped Out by Taxation?

Greece has confirmed that a nation can spend itself into a fiscal crisis.

And the Greek experience also has confirmed that bailouts exacerbate a fiscal crisis by enabling more bad policy, while also rewarding spendthrift politicians and reckless lenders (as I predicted when Greece’s finances first began to unravel).

So now let’s look at a third question: Can a country tax itself to death? Greek politicians are doing their best to see if this is possible, with a seemingly endless parade of tax increases (so many that even the tax-loving folks at the IMF have balked).

At the very least, they’ve pushed the private sector into hospice care.

Let’s peruse a couple of recent stories from Ekathimerini, an English-language Greek news outlet. We’ll start with a rather grim look at a very punitive tax regime that is aggressively grabbing money from taxpayers with arrears.

Tax authorities have confiscated the salaries, pensions and assets of more that 180,000 taxpayers since the start of the year, but expired debts to the state have continued to rise, reaching almost 100 billion euros, as the taxpaying capacity of the Greeks is all but exhausted. In the month of October, authorities made almost 1,000 confiscations a day from people with debts to the state of more than 500 euros. In the first 10 months of the year, the state confiscated some 4 billion euros.

But the Greek government is losing a race. The more it raises taxes, the more people fall behind.

in October alone, the unpaid tax obligations of households and enterprises came to 1.2 billion euros. Unpaid taxes from January to October amounted to 10.44 billion euros, which brings the total including unpaid debts from previous years to almost 100 billion euros (99.8 billion), or about 55 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The inability of citizens and businesses to meet their obligations is also confirmed by the course of public revenues, which this year have declined by more than 2.5 billion euros. The same situation is expected to continue into next year, as the new tax burdens and increased social security contributions look set to send debts to the state soaring.

The fact that revenues have declined should be a glaring signal to politicians that they are past the revenue-maximizing point on the Laffer Curve.

But the government probably won’t be satisfied until everyone in the private sector is in debt to the state.

There are now 4.17 million taxpayers who owe the state money. This means that one in every two taxpayers is in arrears to the state, with 1,724,708 taxpayers facing the risk of forced collection measures. Of the 99.8 billion euros of total debt, just 10-15 billion euros is still considered to be collectible.

Here’s another article from Ekathimerini that looks at how Greece is doubling down on suicidal fiscal policy.

Greece is defying the prevalent trend among the world’s industrialized nations for reducing tax rates in order to boost investment and competitiveness… According to the report, in contrast to the majority of OECD member states, Greece has raised taxes and social security contributions as government policy is geared toward reaching fiscal targets, even though this inevitably harms the crisis-hit country’s competitiveness.

It’s hard to think of a tax that Greek politicians haven’t increased.

Greece…is also the only one among them that increased taxes on labor and corporate profits. …eight OECD member states reduced rates in 2017 on an average of 2.7 percent…, in stark contrast to Greece, which…has the highest corporate tax rates in the OECD compared to 2008. Many countries also offered breaks and reductions on income tax, …also cutting social contributions in 2015-2016. Not so Greece, which in 2016 raised both, thereby increasing the overall burden on low-income earners by 1.5 percent. Greece was also the only country in the OECD to raise value-added tax rates in 2016.

And what was accomplished by all these tax increases? Less tax revenue and recession. That’s a lose-lose scenario by almost any standard.

…in the 2014-2015 period, 25 of the 32 countries for which data is available recorded an increase in tax-to-GDP levels. The report…mentions Greece as an exception to this trend as well, noting that the country was in recession in that two-year period.

Even an establishment outlet like the U.K.-based Financial Times has noticed.

Unemployment is at 23 per cent and 44 per cent of those aged 15-24 are out of work. More than a fifth of Greeks get by without basics such as heating or a telephone connection. …Sweeping new taxes imposed across the economy have already left communities scrabbling to survive. …this year will bring €1bn worth of new taxes on cars, telecoms, television, fuel, cigarettes, coffee and beer… New taxes have eroded disposable incomes still further. Value added tax has increased to 24 per cent on food, disproportionately hurting the poor, for whom living costs represent a far higher proportion of income. Most detested is the Enfia property levy, which brings in €2.65bn a year – roughly €650 from each of Greece’s four million households. …recent direct taxes like the new estate tax have affected households that have seen their income decline greatly during the crisis. The rise of VAT, meanwhile, only adds to the cost of life of poor families.” …this month, new levies will mean the taxes paid by his business will jump 29 per cent.

Interestingly, the article acknowledges that profligate politicians created the mess, while also noting that the Greek people also deserve blame.

…blame is laid on the politicians who spent the 27 years of Greece’s EU membership before the crisis loading the country with debt to fund increased defence expenditure, more public sector jobs and higher pension and other social benefit payments. …“The Greek people should be blamed. We voted for these people,” he concludes.

The problem, of course, is that Greek voters don’t show any interest in now voting for politicians who will clean up the mess. Simply stated, too many people in the country are living off the government.

In other words, even though it’s mathematically possible to fix the problems, the erosion of societal capital suggests that Greece may have reached the point of collapse.

From a fiscal perspective, this chart from OECD data confirms that policy is getting worse rather than better. Measured as a share of economic output, taxes and spending have both become a bigger burden over the past 10 years.

What makes this chart especially depressing is that economic output is lower today than it was in 2005, which means that the problem isn’t so much that annual tax receipts and spending level are climbing, but rather that the private economy is declining.

Let’s close with an additional look at the moribund Greek economy and a discussion of how the bailouts have made a bad situation even worse.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized on the impact of ever-higher taxes and a still-stifling bureaucratic business environment.

…the bailout is not in fact working, if you think the goal should be to restore Athens to sound public finances and to offer Greeks economic hope for the future. The European Commission’s autumn forecast predicts eurozone economic growth of 2.2% this year, the fastest in a decade. But Greece is falling further behind. …Investment has collapsed in the country, to 11% of GDP last year from 26% of GDP in 2007. …The bailouts are creating a dangerous situation in which the government has enough cash to meet its debts but no one else in Greece can thrive.

And here’s the scary part. What happens when there’s another global recession? The already-bad numbers in Greece will get even worse. Not a pleasant thought.

P.S. If you want to know why I’m not optimistic about Greece’s future, how can you expect good policy from a nation that subsidizes pedophiles and requires stool samples to set up online companies? I’d be more hopeful if Greek politicians instead had learned some lessons from Slovakia or Latvia.

P.P.S. Notwithstanding a the constant stream of bad policy, I am capable of feeling sorry for Greece.

P.P.P.S. Newer readers may not be familiar with my collection of Greek-related humor. This cartoon is quite  good, but this this one is my favorite. And the final cartoon in this post also has a Greek theme.

We also have a couple of videos. The first one features a European romantic comedy and the second one features a Greek comic pontificating about Germany.

Last but not least, here are some very un-PC maps of how various peoples – including the Greeks – view different European nations. Speaking of stereotypes, the Greeks are in a tight race with the Italians and Germans for being considered untrustworthy.

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South Africa’s Failing Experiment with Higher Taxes

Since there’s a big debate about whether there should be tax cuts and tax reform in the United States, let’s see what we can learn from abroad.

And let’s focus specifically on whether changes in tax policy actually produce “revenue feedback” because of the Laffer Curve. In other words, if tax rates change, does that incentive people to alter how much they work, save, and invest, thus changing the amount of taxable income they earn and report?

I’ve written about how the Laffer Curve has impacted revenue in nations such as France, Russia, Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Now let’s go to Africa. In a column for BizNis Africa, Kyle Mandy of PwC explicitly warns that South Africa is at the wrong spot on the Laffer Curve.

At the time of the 2017 Budget in February, a number of commentators, including myself, warned National Treasury and Parliament that the tax increases announced in the Budget, particularly on personal income tax, would likely push tax revenues very close to the top of the Laffer curve, i.e. the point at which tax revenues are maximised and beyond which tax rate increases will actually result in a decrease in tax revenues.

Before continuing with the article, I can’t resist making an important point. The author understands that it is a bad idea to be on the downward-sloping part of the Laffer Curve. As he points out, that’s when tax rates are so punitive that “tax rate increases will actually result in a decrease in tax revenues.”

That’s correct, of course, but it’s almost as important to understand that it’s also a very bad idea to be at the “top of the Laffer Curve.” As noted in a study by economists from the Federal Reserve and the University of Chicago, that’s the point where economic damage is so great that a dollar of tax revenue can be associated with $20 of damage to the private sector.

Now that I got that off my chest, let’s look at some of the details in the article about South Africa.

The evidence…suggests that, in the current environment, South Africa has maximised the tax revenues that it can extract from its citizens and has possibly even gone past that point and is now on the downward slope of the curve. Why do I say this? The last few years have seen significant tax increases… These tax increases saw the main budget tax: GDP ratio increase from 24.5% in 2012/13 to 26% in 2015/16, primarily led by increases in personal income tax. However, since then the tax:GDP ratio has stalled at 26% in both 2016/17 and in the revised forecast for 2017/18. It is not unreasonable to expect that the tax:GDP ratio for 2017/18 may fall below 26% in the final outcome. The stalling of the tax:GDP ratio comes despite significant tax increases in each of 2016/17 and 2017/18 which were expected to deliver ZAR18 billion and ZAR28 billion of additional tax revenues respectively.

Once again, I can’t resist the temptation to interject. That final sentence should be changed to read “the stalling of the tax:GDP ratio comes because of significant tax increases.”

Mr. Mandy concludes his column by warning that the current approach is leading to bad results and noting that further tax hikes would make a bad situation even worse.

…the South African Revenue Service has acknowledged that it has seen a decline in levels of compliance. …So what does all of this mean for tax policy and fiscal policy generally? Simply put, National Treasury have been placed in an invidious position. Increasing taxes further in the current environment could be self-defeating and result in a decline in the tax:GDP ratio. This risk is particularly prevalent insofar as further tax increases in the form of personal income tax are concerned. Increasing the corporate tax rate would further dent investor confidence and economic growth.

The good news is that even South Africa’s government seems to realize there is a problem.

Here are some excerpts from a recent story.

Finance minister Malusi Gigaba has received President Jacob Zuma’s stamp of approval for an inquiry into tax administration and governance at the South African Revenue Service (Sars). According to the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), tax revenue is expected to fall almost R51 billion short of earlier estimates in the current fiscal year. …The probe also comes amid warnings that further tax hikes could be futile and may even result in a decline in the country’s tax-to-GDP ratio. …National Treasury has introduced various tax hikes over the past few years. The main budget tax-to-GDP ratio increased from 24.5% in 2012/13 to 26% in 2015/16, mainly as a result of higher effective personal income tax rates. But the tax-to-GDP ratio has subsequently stalled at 26% in 2016/17 and in the latest 2017/18 forecast and it is not inconceivable that the final outcome for the current fiscal year could fall below 26%… Gigaba seems to be aware of the dangers of additional tax hikes and warned in his MTBPS that it could be “counterproductive”.

I’m glad that there’s a recognition that higher taxes would backfire, but that’s not going to fix any problems.

The pressure for higher taxes will be relentless unless the South African government begins to control spending. The government should adopt a constitutional spending cap, which would alleviate budget pressures and create some “fiscal space” for lower tax rates.

But I’m not confident that will happen, particularly if the International Monetary Fund gets involved. Desmond Lachman, formerly of the IMF and now with the American Enterprise Institute, writes that the country is in trouble.

South Africa is in trouble. Per capita income has been in decline for several years and its economy is in recession for the second time in eight years. Unemployment remains at over 27%. Meanwhile, the rand is floundering on the foreign exchange market… In view of the favourable global economic environment, the country’s predicament is even more troubling. Interest rates have rarely been lower and capital flows to emerging markets have seldom been stronger. …If South Africa’s economy is performing poorly in this environment, it will probably struggle even more when central banks start to normalise their interest rate policies and when the global economic environment becomes more challenging.

He has the right description of the problem, but I’m worried about his proposed solution.

IMF assistance can hasten restoration of confidence. …An IMF programme would not be popular politically within South Africa but the government does not appear to have any realistic alternative.

Simply stated, the IMF has a very bad track record of pushing for higher taxes.

That doesn’t necessarily mean its bureaucrats will push for bad policy in South Africa, but past performance sometimes is a good predictor of future behavior.

For what it’s worth, the IMF is fully aware that the burden of government has been increasing. Here’s a blurb from the most recent Article IV report on South Africa.

During the past few years, the share of both revenues and expenditures continued its rising trend. The size of general government in South Africa is one of the highest among international peers at a similar level of development. Primary expenditures rose by 1.5 percentage points of GDP between 2012/13 and 2015/16, owing primarily to public enterprise-related transfers (0.8 percent of GDP, including a 0.6 percent of GDP equity injection for Eskom in 2015/2016) as well as relatively generous wage agreements combined with an increase in consolidated government employment (0.3 percent of GDP). In recent years, including the 2017 budget, higher personal income taxation has been the main tax  policy instrument to collect revenue combined with higher excise rates.

And here’s a section of the data table showing the expanding burden of both taxes and spending.

Unfortunately, the IMF never says that this growing fiscal burden is a problem. Instead, the focus is solely on the fact that spending is higher than revenue. In other words, the IMF mistakenly fixates on the symptom of red ink instead of addressing the real problem of excessive government.

So if the bureaucrats do an intervention, it almost certainly will result in bailout money for South Africa’s politicians in exchange for a “balanced” package of spending cuts and tax increases.

But the spending cuts likely will be either phony (reductions in planned increases, just like they do it in Washington) or will quickly evaporate. But the higher taxes will be real and permanent. Just like in most other nations where the IMF has intervened. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Speaking of misguided international bureaucracies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development already has been pushing bad policy on South Africa. The bureaucrats even brag about their impact, as you can see from this Table in the OECD’s recent Economic Survey on South Africa.

The OECD is happy that income tax rates have increased and that there’s more double taxation on dividends, but the bureaucrats are still hoping for a new energy tax, expansion of the value-added tax, and more property taxes.

They must really hate the people of South Africa. No wonder the OECD is known as the world’s worst international bureaucracy.

I’ll close by noting that the country’s problems are not limited to fiscal policy. The country is only ranked #95 by Economic Freedom of the World. And it was as high as #46 in 2000.

Instead of pushing for higher taxes, that’s the problem the OECD and IMF should be trying to fix. But given their track record, that’s about as likely as me playing centerfield next year for the Yankees.

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Australia, Donald Trump, and Limited Government

I gave a couple of speeches about fiscal policy in Australia late last week.

During the Q&A sessions (as so often happens when I speak overseas), the audiences mostly asked questions about Donald Trump. I generally give a three-part response.

• I tell them I was surprised by the election results.
• I tell them Trump is not a small-government Republican.
• I plead with them (often with no success) to ask questions about fiscal policy.

So when I was asked to appear on Australian television, you won’t be surprised to learn that I was asked several questions about Trump.

But the good news is that the segment lasted for more than 18 minutes so I got a chance to pontificate about taxes and spending.

In particular, I had an opportunity to explain two very important principles of fiscal policy.

First, I explained the Rahn Curve and discussed why both Australia and the United States should worry that the public sector is too large. This means less growth in our respective nations because government spending (whether financed by taxes or borrowing) diverts resources from the productive sector of the economy.

Second, I explained the Laffer Curve and tried to get across why high tax rates are a bad idea (even if they raise more revenue). As always, my top goal was to explain that a nation should not seek to be at the revenue-maximizing point.

I also had an opportunity to take some potshots at international bureaucracies such as the IMF and OECD. Yes, we get good statistics from such organizations and even some occasional good research, but they have a statist policy agenda that undermines global growth. And I never cease to be offended that bureaucrats at these organizations get tax-free salaries, yet get to jet around the world urging higher taxes on the rest of us.

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An Important Lesson about Corporate Income Tax Rates, Double Taxation, Competitiveness, and Tax Revenue

For months, I’ve been arguing that the big reduction in the corporate tax rate is the most important part of Trump’s tax agenda.

But not because of politics or anything like that. Instead, my goal is to enable additional growth by shifting to a system that doesn’t do as much damage to investment and job creation. A lower rate is consistent with good theory, and there’s also recent research from Australia and Germany to support my position.

Especially since the United States is falling behind the rest of the world. America now has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world and arguably may have the highest rate in the entire world.

Needless to say, this is a self-inflicted wound on U.S. competitiveness.

But since the numbers I’ve been sharing are now a few year’s old, let’s now update some of this data.

Check out these four charts from a new OECD annual report on tax policy changes (the some one that I cited a few days ago when explaining that European-sized government means a suffocating tax burden on the poor and middle class).

Here’s the grim data on the corporate income tax rate (the vertical blue bars). As you can see, the United wins the booby prize for having the highest rate.

But here’s some “good news.” When you add in the second layer of tax on corporate income, the United States is “only” in third place, about where we were back in 2011.

France imposes the highest combined rate on corporate and dividend income (no surprise since the nation’s national sport is taxation), while Ireland is in second place (the corporate rate is very low, but personal rates are high and dividends receive no protection from double taxation).

For what it’s worth, I think it’s incredibly bad policy when governments are skimming 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, and even 60 percent of the income being generated by business investment.

Particularly since high rates don’t translate into high revenue. Check out this third chart. You’ll notice that revenues are relatively low in the United States even though (or perhaps because) the tax rate is very high.

But our final chart provides the strongest evidence. Just like the IMF, the OECD is admitting that tax revenues have remained constant over time, even though (or because) corporate tax rates have plunged.

In other words, the Laffer Curve is alive and well.

Incidentally, the global shift to lower tax rates hasn’t stopped. I wrote back in May about plans for lower corporate tax burdens in Hungary and the United Kingdom and I noted last November that Croatia was lowering its corporate rate.

And, thanks to liberalizing effect of tax competition, more and more nations are hopping on the tax cut bandwagon.

Consider what’s happening in Sweden.

Sweden’s center-left minority government is proposing a corporate tax cut to 20 percent from 22 percent, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson and Financial Markets Minister Per Bolund said on Monday… “With the proposals we want to strengthen competitiveness and create a more dynamic business climate,” they said… The proposed corporate tax cut would be…implemented on July 1, 2018.

Or what’s taking place in Belgium.

…government ministers finally reached agreement on a number of reforms to the Belgian tax and employment systems. …Belgium is to slash corporation tax from 34% to 29% next year. By 2020 corporation tax will have been cut to 25%. …Capital gains tax on the first 627 euros of dividends from shares disappears, a measure intended to encourage share ownership.

Or what’s looming in Germany.

Germany will likely need to make changes to its corporation tax system in coming years in response to growing tax competition from other countries, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Wednesday… “I expect there will be a need to take action on corporation tax in coming years because in some countries, from the U.S. to Britain, but also on other continents, there are many considerations where we can’t simply say we’ll ignore them,” Schaeuble told a real estate conference.

This bring a smile to my face. Greedy politicians are being pressured to cut tax rates, even though they would prefer to do the opposite. Let’s hope the United States joins this “race to the bottom” before it’s too late.

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