Month: October 2017

I’ve consistently said marijuana taxes can be too high at first. Fitch Ratings warns of that too, but supports its warning with this inaccurate statement: “Colorado, Washington and Oregon each lowered their cannabis taxes following legalization to address black market competition.”  https://www.fitchratings.com/site/pr/1029632. But it would be nice to get the facts straight.

Fitch apparently relies on material published April 20, 2016 (4/20 – get it?) by the Tax Foundation, which alleged, “Colorado, Washington, and Oregon have all taken steps to reduce their marijuana tax rates.” That was questionable too, even at the time, but there’s another problem: “lowered” is not the same as “taken steps to lower.”

Let’s start with Colorado. Continue reading Inaccurate info about cannabis taxes

The killer problem for carbon taxes is that they favor foreign manufacturers, and we want manufacturing jobs. Any carbon tax will provoke calls for border adjustment taxes – or border tax adjustments (BTAs). The difficulty in imposing BTAs is great. Professor Peter Barnes of Duke has guided my thinking on the issues involved, and some of this comes directly from him.  But this is my primitive thinking, for which he is not to blame.

How can we distinguish between imported goods that were manufactured using coal-generated electricity and goods manufactured using solar energy?  To create the right incentives, we should make that distinction.  But administering the distinction is impossible.    Continue reading Border Tax Adjustments for Carbon Taxes — The ODC Model