In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled The Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, which identified three basic philosophical positions on the issue....

Tax systems have become increasingly complex in recent decades. There is no such thing as a single tax. There are individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, sometimes local income taxes. There are a variety of indirect taxes, such as the value added tax (VAT), various kinds of excise...

Paying taxes is a cost of doing business. The looters (or public servants, depending on your perspective) must be paid and tax proceeds must be distributed to various groups and individuals, both worthy and unworthy. But tax expense includes more than just the amount of taxes that must be paid....

There is an on-going debate about tax competition or tax harmonization. The high-tax welfare states want to keep tax rates high so that they can continue to fund their social welfare programs. But they are losing business and investments to lower tax jurisdictions where governments let people...

Each year the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal publish the Index of Economic Freedom. This major study compiles economic data on more than 150 countries. The compilers divide the data into ten categories, ranging from business freedom to labor freedom. One of the ten categories is...

Each May, Forbes magazine publishes a study on tax misery. The Forbes Tax Misery Index is a proxy for evaluating whether tax policy attracts or repels capital and talent. It is computed by adding the top marginal tax rate for the corporate income tax, individual income tax, wealth tax,...