Law Commons^™

The Jec's Estate Tax Report: Myths And Legends, Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan

Advocates of estate tax repeal often assert that family-run businesses and farms are broken up when heirs are unable to pay the estate tax. This claim has never been proven, but a recent Joint Economic Committee report claims to demonstrate that it is true. I assess the arguments and evidence presented in the JEC report and find that there is nothing in it that proves that the estate tax breaks up family-run businesses and farms. In fact, the most credible source cited by the report suggests that families might have adequate liquid resources to pay the estate tax or even …

The Case Against Income Averaging, Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan

[Note: Earlier versions of this article appeared on SSRN under the titles 'Should We Adopt William Vickrey's Cumulative Averaging Income Tax System? Progressivity and Simplicity in Tax Reform,' and 'Should We Tax Average Income? Vickrey, Equity, and Tax Design.' They have been superseded by this version.]

Should tax liability be based on annual income or on the average of a taxpayer's income earned over the space of several years (or even a lifetime)? This article assesses proposals to replace the current method of computing taxes with a system that would allow taxpayers to smooth out their income tax liabilities by …

Is It Sometimes Good To Run Budget Deficits? If So, Should We Admit It (Out Loud)?, Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan

There are bad deficits and there are good deficits. What makes a fiscal deficit good or bad depends on both the context in which the deficit is run and the reason that the deficit is rising. The belief that it is unquestionably foolish to adopt policies that directly or indirectly increase the government's annual borrowing on the financial markets - which is what it means to run a budget deficit - is not the universal truth that the current conventional wisdom might imply. Budget deficits are potentially dangerous and must be monitored carefully, but they are not always, inevitably, completely, …