Month: May 2010

Some go so far as to call for abolition of “differential excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol and entertainment. These kinds of taxes, often called sin taxes, are disrespectful of people’s freely made choices and represent an unwarranted interference with private decision making.”  Roy Cordato, Sales taxes and free choices, (May 25, 2010), http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/05/25/v-print/498695/sales-taxes-and-free-choices.html.  That’s wild.  The full letter is pasted below.

A more mainstream conservative view that is skeptical of excise taxes on specific goods says a tax should be “[n]eutral in its impact on resource allocation decisions” but allows for non-neutrality where there are negative externalities or “spillover effect.”  Joint Economic Committee Study by Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway, Some Underlying Principles of Tax Policy (September 1998), http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/taxpol/taxpol.htm.

Point of View

Sales taxes and free choices

BY ROY CORDATO

Continue reading “Free choice to use tobacco and alcohol — Tax free!”

1. Simplistically, either we adopt a marijuana tax (low hanging fruit) or we go broke because can’t muster the will to make hard choices.  This is a test.

2. For years, I worked for Congress on trying to tax income from intangibles, which is not only hard to measure, it’s hard even to locate (companies like to say it’s in tax havens).   Locating marijuana will be simple unless the tax is so high as to encourage bootlegging.  But once you find it, you can measure it.  Or tax it based on potency.