The Center for New Revenue looks for new ways to fund government, our inevitable endeavor.
The Center looks at sources for new and more sensible revenue — asking the question, What else can we tax? The main outlet for this work is http://newrevenue.org. Here are the three main areas of interest.
1. Revenue from intoxicants. Taxation of marijuana has been kept in the closet, as the folks thinking about it the most are taxpayers — ganjapreneurs, cannabisnessmen — folks who seek to profit from legal marijuana sales. Naturally enough. Current topics of interest include (1) a potency base for marijuana taxation, (2) the monopoly alternative to the taxation for marijuana, and (3) the denial of the advertising deduction under Internal Revenue Code section 280E and its state analogues. Marijuana taxes are more challenging for tax design than alcohol taxes, where reform at the federal level would consist of raising the rates and indexing them.
2. Taxation of carbon and pollutants. For instance, a jet fuel tax is low hanging fruit, since it’s hardly regressive.
3. International taxation. This was the founder’s subspecialty of tax law for years, but big capital has the votes, as illustrated by the 2017 Tax Act’s Tax Repatriation Holiday for income of U.S. multinationals artificially shifted offshore and trapped there. (Search this site for “repatriation.”)
The Center’s founder, Pat Oglesby, worked for the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation from 1982 to 1988, first as a Legislation Attorney and then as the Foreign Tax Counsel; he then, thanks to Senator Lloyd Bentsen, held the position of Chief Tax Counsel of the Committee on Finance of the United States Senate for two years. More history on the Pat Oglesby page of this website.
The Center’s informal Board of Advisors consists of:
Professor Douglas A. Berman of Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, holder of Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law, and is Executive Director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center, and operator of the Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform Blog, http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/marijuana_law/
Paul Gallis, Ph.D., of Savannah, Georgia;
LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, of Washington, D.C., and Laurens, South Carolina, a retired lawyer, tax policy expert, and Joint Tax Committee staffer;
Joseph Murphy, of Boone, North Carolina;
Emily Oglesby, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina;
Mary Norris Oglesby, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina;
Robert Schofield, of Georgetown, South Carolina; and
Albert Varner, M.D., of San Rafael, CA.
Advisors do not necessarily agree with (or even keep up with) views of the Center or the founder.
All material produced only for this website is in the public domain. Please feel free to copy it, with attribution. This web site won’t outlive me, and I turned 69 in 2016, so if there’s anything you think worth preserving, preserve away.
Founded in 2011, the Center is a North Carolina not-for-profit corporation, but has not sought tax-exempt status under section 501(c) of the Code. If tax reform is your mission, skepticism about the “tax-deductible charity organization” rules comes with the territory. For now.
Contact information:
Pat Oglesby
Attorney and Founder
The Center for New Revenue
po@newrevenue.org
www.newrevenue.org
1830 North Lakeshore Drive, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514-6733 USA
919 619 8838
