Quotes from T.R. Reid

The higher the rate, the more interest there is in avoiding the tax. Either you move or you shift your profits overseas, as American corporations have proven very good at doing.

47% problem—that is, the significant number of people who don't pay income tax.

A consumption tax like the VAT is paid by everybody, including those who pay no income tax and those who are in the country illegally.

The crucial point is not how much somebody pays in taxes but rather how much she has left after paying. This biblical lesson has been invoked time and again to justify a tax code that calls on the rich to pay higher rates than the poor.

According to their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, most for-profit insurance companies maintain a medical loss ratio of about 80 percent, which is to say that 20 cents of every dollar people pay in premiums for health insurance doesn't buy any health care.

Recently, there has been considerable public concern about the fact that 47% of Americans pay no income tax; the presidential candidate Mitt Romney opined that these are people "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them. . . . These are people who pay no income tax.

BBLR means that if the tax base—that is, the total amount of income, or sales, or property that can be taxed—is kept as large as possible, then the tax rate—that is, the percentage that people have to give to the government—can be kept low. Virtually all economists and tax experts agree that this is the best way to run a tax regime.

The American sage Will Rogers captured this concept precisely. Of course people like low taxes, Rogers said, but there's something even more important: "People want JUST taxes, more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth.

If there's no deduction for contributions, charities don't have to produce a certified receipt for each donation, and the contributor doesn't have to track down the nine-digit Tax ID Number of each charity she wants to support.

ALL THOSE ISSUES SHOULD be enough to demonstrate that the deduction for charitable contributions is costly, unfair, and easy to abuse. But there's actually a more fundamental problem with this particular deduction: It doesn't work.

We pour more money into national defense than anybody else; our defense budgets, in fact, are bigger than those in the next eleven countries combined

The big gorilla of homeowner tax breaks is the deduction for mortgage interest, which reduces income tax revenues by about $100 billion each year. That is, this one tax deduction costs more than the budgets of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, the Interior, and the Treasury combined.

Some are rich, some are poor. Some are beautiful, some aren't. Some are brilliant, some aren't. But when we get sick - then everybody is equal. Everybody must have equal right to the best medical treatment we can provide. That is the basic rule of French health care. Surely, that's the basic rule of health care in every country. -pg 64

The argument for a lower tax rate on capital income—an argument supported by many economists—runs as follows: (1) economies need capital investment to grow and create new jobs; (2) capital investment by definition is risky (you could lose it all); and (3) therefore, a lower rate of tax on potential gains is necessary to encourage people to make those essential, but risky, investments.

Only the richest smidgen of the population had to file a return, and even for them the top tax rate was just 7%.

Economic growth is not the sole aim of our society," the Hall Report said. "The value of a human life must be decided without regard to . . . economic considerations. We must take into account the human and spiritual aspects involved.

broker or banker who invests other people's money can count his own salary as "capital gains" and thus pay tax on it at the reduced, capital gains rate.

anybody buying a qualified plug-in electric car—the list of approved vehicles includes sleek, sporty cars like the $105,000 Tesla Model S P85D and the $138,000 BMW i8—can subtract up to $7,500 from the income tax he or she owes Uncle Sam.

The notion that government has to create a mechanism to provide medical care for all who are sick was born in the late 19th century in the very heart of Europe, in a newly created nation called German. - pg 55

In the 1960s, the corporate tax brought in about 33% of U.S. tax revenues. Today, the same tax provides less than 9% of revenues; that means individual taxpayers have to take up the slack and pay more.

The income tax burden, he says, should fall more heavily on those who make their money on financial dealing; he says the U.S. system, in which the tax on capital gains is much lower than the tax on wages and salaries, is simply upside-down and thus counterproductive for dealing with the growth of inequality.

If this 80% top marginal rate were applied to earnings over $500,000, Piketty says, the tax regime would help to even out inequality without stunting economic growth. Beyond the income

special preference to "an automobile manufacturer incorporated in Delaware on October 13, 1916." That would be General Motors, although the name of the firm does not appear.

It's classic: Congress decides to reduce the complexity of our tax code by making it even more complex.