More tax policy analysis

The new, student-run, online journal of the San Jose State University MST Program - The Contemporary Tax Journal , features tax policy anal...

History - Andrew Mellon on Tax Policy and Reform

A bit of history ... Andrew W. Mellon was Secretary of Treasury from 1921 to 1932 serving under Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. He...

250 reasons for federal tax complexity

I noticed a report from the Joint Committee on Taxation issued in December 2010 that has a variety of interesting information in it. It is t...

More on tax expenditures - Minnesota report

An extensive report prepared for the Minnesota Department of Revenue in February 2011 examines the state's tax expenditures and tax exp...

California SB 508 and Accountability

I am surprised and pleased about the attention being paid to tax expenditures at the federal and state levels. In California, SB 508 passed...

Taxing Services - More Reasons and Support

I came across a short report issued by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University entitled, "Taxing Services:...

Governor Brown Proposal to Improve CA Sales Tax

California Governor Brown's current budget proposal includes a manufacturing sales tax exemption ( pages 11 and 31 ). New businesses wou...

S. 940 - Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act

There is a lot of press attention on the Senate vote of May 17, 2011 on S. 940 - Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act. The Senate did not get th...

Four Years of Blogging!

I started this blog May 14, 2007. Some of the first topics I posted were about weaknesses in the California sales tax, such as the base bein...

State Tax Expenditures and CBPP Report

The Center for Budget & Policy Priorities has released a report - Promoting State Budget Accountability Through Tax Expenditure Reportin...

More on who benefits from tax expenditures

The talk about the $1.1 trillion of tax expenditures in the federal income tax system continues. An op ed blog in the Christian Science Moni...

California Oil Severance Tax, AB 1326 and Our Troubled Budget and Tax Systems

An editorial from NBC (5/5/11) on another proposal for an oil severance tax in California caught my attention and I posted a comment there....

Taxing Businesses and the Challenge of Lowering the Corporate Tax Rate

Talk of lowering the corporate tax rate seems to sometimes ignore the reality that most businesses operate outside of the corporate form. Th...