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Taxing Political Donations: The Case For Corrective Taxes In Campaign Finance, David Gamage
Taxing Political Donations: The Case For Corrective Taxes In Campaign Finance, David Gamage
Articles by Maurer Faculty
Command-and-control regulations are generally thought to be inferior to incentive-based alternatives. This essay proposes an incentive-based approach for regulating campaign finance. In place of our current regime of contribution ceilings, the essay calls for a graduated system of contribution taxes. Rather than capping the size of political donations at a specified dollar level, we should tax donations based on a schedule of graduated rates - the larger the size of a contribution, the higher the level of taxation.
Contribution taxes generate two primary advantages over contribution ceilings. First, contribution taxes preserve more total surplus. This surplus can be shared by …