Tag: incentives

Real Congressional Reform– The Art Auble Plan

The draft report from the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, subject of my previous post, has some proposals for reform of how Congress makes (or doesn’t make) expenditure decisions.  Frankly, I do not understand them.  Perhaps this is because the draft report is simply a series of slides, not really a report.  Or maybe these things are too complex for a simpleton like me to understand.

Separately, there is apparently a proposal to cut Congresspersons’ pay, and even one to reduce their pay every year that the government runs a deficit.

But these won’t work, for a very simple reason: Continue reading Real Congressional Reform– The Art Auble Plan

Corporate income tax is evil

We know that because “Don’t be evil” Google pays almost no corporate income tax.   This Bloomberg/Business Week article outlines how they do it.  It involves Dutch, Irish, and Bermudan subsidiaries, and is apparently quite legal.  In addition to playing international transfer-pricing games, of course, corporations can take advantage of various incentives and loopholes built into or discovered in the tax code.

Naturally, I am mentioning this to point out that a land value tax cannot be avoided, as long as land transaction, description, and payment records are public. (And, I might add, as long as there are some reasonably free news media, and some members of the public who pay at least a little bit of attention.) There is never any question as to which jursidiction land is in, and there is no need for incentives to attact land.