Tax links, Rates Blog and Offsetting Behaviour

The Rates Blog is doing this cool thing where they have written segments on different tax policies.  They have:

• The recommendations from the 2025 taskforce (read Don Brash).
• A running post from the Tax working group.
• Recommendations from Gareth Morgan and an opinion piece.
• Arthur Grimes and Mike Shaw on the land tax idea.

They are good pieces for sure, go have a look.  We promise to write something on tax in the next week or two, although I can’t vouch to live up to the high standards these guys have set.

Also have a look at Eric Crampton’s post on spending and tax.  The tax discussion is about trying to figure out how to set up the tax system to get revenue at the lowest economic cost.  There is also a separate, but important, discussion that we need to have on the optimal level of government spending – as these taxes we use to spend on government projects do have very real costs, both in terms of taking money out of peoples pockets AND the loss of efficiency associated with this taxation (deadweight loss).