Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

Here are some good resources on taxes:

1) Freedomworks has a new site, Scrap the Code, highlighting the flaws in the complex tax code, and calling for a simpler tax structure.  One of the most interesting facts was that the IRS gets tax law wrong about 10% of the time.  I know, 90% correct is a decent score for students (a high ‘B’ when I went to school), but imagine if the teachers only had 90% of the correct answers.

2) Cato-at-Liberty presents some of the latest CBO data on the effective federal tax rates (this includes federal payroll taxes and business taxes).  Specifically, the top fifth of households in terms of income pay about 26% of their income in federal taxes, while the bottom fifth pay about 4%; the overall average is about 20.7% (note that state and local taxes consume another 10% or so).

3) The Tax Foundation’s Joe Henchman recent presented at the University of Pittsburgh on why film tax credits are poor policy.  His reasoning – they cost money, they don’t grow the economy, and they lead to censorship – are outlined on the Tax Foundation blog.

4) The Cato Institute has a new video on the Tax Code.