News

The Debt Clock will tour around the whole country, stopping off at national landmarks and key cities to raise awareness of the national debt amongst the taxpayers who will have…

This is the GDP growth expected in Euroland this year. Comparing with the 3% of growth estimated for the United States, it proves that the euro was not a shield…

We are delighted to announce that the French government definitely abandoned the project to ntroduce a carbon tax. This decision came after the ruling of the Constituional Council at the…

Despite all the troubles he has to face, President Obama keeps renewing his commitment to move forward with his plan to reform healthcare. His intention is to partly finance the reform with tax increases (there will also be cost savings in healthcare programs) and, not surprisingly, to shift the general burden a bit more to the wealthiest. Looking more closely at the proposal, however, it appears that it will increase one of the most economically harmful taxes: the tax on savings.

The French minister of finance Eric Woerth is ready to consider the possibility for France to write down in the Constitution a rule for the equilibrium of public finances. He…

The Washington state Senate approved a tax package that would raise $890 million over the next sixteen months. The tax package includes a temporary three-tenths-of-a-cent sales tax increase plus increased…

The Institute of Economic Affairs is publishing a study on the burden of tax compliance and administration in the UK.

This monograph shows the severely regressive nature of the costs of complying with the UK tax system – small firms suffer far more than large firms from the imposition of government bureaucracy related to tax collection.

The European Commission is working on a study of the impacts that a tax on carbon emissions would have in the European Union. The Commission is about to come up in the coming months with a proposal for a “green” tax.

Before the appointment of the new commissioners last year, the Commission was considering a proposal for minimum tax on energy products based on their carbon dioxide emissions as part of a broader plan to reform energy taxation in the Union.

The annual report of the World Bank is announcing a record level of the number of business regulation reforms in the world. Between June 2008 and May 2009, 287 reforms were recorded in 131 economies, 20% more than the year before.The good news are that “reformers focused on making it easier to start and operate a business, strengthening property rights and improving the efficiency of commercial dispute resolution and bankruptcy procedures”, as one can read in the report. Eastern Europe was one of the more active regions. Here is the ranking of the 27 European countries:

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on February 24, 2010