NYTimes Presents Ideas of Harvard Economics Professor, N. Gregory Mankiw, Advisor to Mitt Romney
Is there a better way to tax?
NYTimes introduces its readers to N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard, and advisor to Mitt Romney: A Better Tax System (Assembly Instructions Included N.Gregory Mankiw 21 Jan. 2012
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) presents another perspective to raise revenue without inhibiting a productive job creating real world economy. AEI, like Prof. Mankiw, finds there is need for bipartisan support and compromise for these ideas. Neither presents a purist view.
Hat Tip: TaxProfBlog
N. Gregory Mankiw presents the first steps to a simpler tax code. Eliminating the myriad special interest deductions and tax credits, which distort the tax code, makes the tax code a system for raising revenue and not social engineering or a kind of a politicized, governmental venture capitalism.
Professor Mankiw refers to two presidential commissions: one from the Bush Administration and one from the Obama Administration.
There is a hint of the Value Added Tax, a stealth tax, in this prescription. Many favor either a Flat Income Tax or a Sales Tax on Consumption of the final product, not by business producers.
There is, also, a hint of social engineering although the concept of taxing a product to ameliorate its externalities, for example, a gas tax to pay for pollution control the the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and even roads and bridges.
