Taxes
February 23, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the author of books including, perhaps most prominently, Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (2014). I reviewed it for National Review in “A new old regime” and subsequently posted a Power Line interview with Professor Hamburger about the book here (more here). In connection with what I’ve been calling Califoria’s (looming) billionaire tax, Professor Hamburger has
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February 20, 2026 — Scott Johnson
The Billionaire Tax Act is vying to make it on to the ballot this November in California. I wrote about it in “Robert Reich’s ressentiment” and cited the Pirate Wires profile “The Secret NIMBY Millionaire Behind California’s Asset Seizure” in my conclusion. I commented that it’s the kind of profile that might give ad hominem argument a good name. The proposed asset tax is dangerous, deceitful, disingenuous, “dumb” (i.e., stupid),
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January 28, 2026 — Scott Johnson
When my late friend and college classmate Berney Strauss resurrected Dartmouth’s moribund humor magazine The Jack-o-Lantern in the fall of 1972, he showed me an old issue with a cartoon by Robert Reich, Dartmouth ’68. Berney was recruiting me to contribute to the first issue to be published under his leadership. As I recall, the Reich cartoon depicted a small male dog looking longingly at a big female dog with
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January 13, 2026 — Bill Glahn
From The Times of London, ‘Tax-the-rich wildfire’: the billionaires fleeing California: A 5 per cent tax grab on assets has the super-rich packing their bags and moving out of state — and even out of the country. The proposed 5 percent tax on wealth (not income) is on the ballot for this upcoming November. If passed by California voters, it will be retroactive back to January 1, 2026. So many
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November 27, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From the U.K. Daily Mail, Keir Starmer wriggled today as he was accused of ‘misleading’ the public over Labour’s tax plans. The PM was repeatedly challenged over whether he deserved the ‘trust’ of the British people in a bruising interview after the Budget. In bad-tempered clashes with Sky News’ Beth Rigby, Sir Keir struggled to justify the latest huge tax raid. Commentator Richard Fernandez noted on Twitter (X), Like Lucy
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November 7, 2025 — Scott Johnson
John and I started writing together about political issues under a joint byline for fun on the side of our law practice in late 1992 and early 1993. We were provoked by the wretched revisionist history of the Reagan era by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters James Barlett and Donald Steele. Barlett and Steele had written what must be the most successful syndicated newspaper series of all time — America: What
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September 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
John Spry is Professor of Finance at the Opus College of Business of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. His expertise includes state and local public finance. With Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s announcement yesterday that he seeks a third term, Professor Spry has attempted to assess Walz’s claim of “cutting taxes for the middle class” against the publicly available record. His analysis demonstrates the difficulty of putting Walz’s
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August 31, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Regarding the taxman, it turns out that George Harrison was correct, all those years ago. And no, they aren’t imposing a levy directly on the billionaire songstress, just on her little-used, oceanfront vacation home in Rhode Island. From CNBC, Rhode Island’s ‘Taylor Swift Tax’ on vacation homes of the wealthy is spreading to other states. Those students of history will recall that Newport, RI, exists as a place in the
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July 23, 2025 — Scott Johnson
My friend Rabbi Joshua Borenstein sent along the video below of Senator Cruz speaking to the orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel with the laconic message: “Ted Cruz explaining at length what it took to get school choice in the Big Beautiful Bill. Definitely worth the 20 minutes.” JB’s interest is professional. He is executive director of the Torah Academy day school in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. I took the time
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April 28, 2025 — John Hinderaker
This story comes from the Telegraph and relates to the U.K. under its new Labour government, which has raised taxes, but you could write the same thing about pretty much any time and place. Capital was mobile 600 years ago, and it is still mobile today: Fresh figures this week showed that the British Government is having to borrow more than expected, as tax income typically paid by the wealthiest
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March 19, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Chuck Schumer went on The View, apparently in search of friendly interlocutors. He preached the Democrats’ old-time religion: “We are united in going after Trump, and showing the American people that he is making the middle class pay for the tax cuts on the rich. … “He wants to use that money for tax cuts for the billionaires. The Republican Party is a different kettle of fish than it used
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October 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Democrats always claim that they will raise taxes on the rich because the rich aren’t paying their “fair share,” but don’t expect anyone in the mainstream media to ever ask a Democrat to give a precise definition of exactly what proportion of someone else’s income it is “fair” to take. The real answer is always “more,” but occasionally Krugman or some other nitwit will openly call for something like a
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August 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday’s New York Times email was headlined, “Why Kamala Harris’ Centrism Is Working.” By “centrism,” I think the Times means keeping as quiet as possible about her actual policy preferences. But a few people, like Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity, are keeping track. They have done the math on Harris’s tax proposals: The Harris tax plan would: * Raise the corporate tax from 21% to 28% * Quadruple the
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June 27, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In 2021 ProPublica initiated the publication of a series it called The Secret IRS Files. Running to some 50 stories, ProPublica’s series served “a crusade for higher taxes, especially a wealth tax,” as the Wall Street Journal puts it in an editorial today. ProPublica based its series on information stolen by IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn. Littlejohn’s theft was criminal and the IRS was responsible for it. ProPublica proclaimed ignorance of
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June 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Having more or less given up on California, New York and Illinois, liberals now tout Minnesota as the golden left-wing state–the state that shows liberal policies can succeed, after all. This effort to valorize–to borrow a liberal cliche–Minnesota is nothing new. Way back in 1973, Time magazine touted Minnesota as “the state that works.” Minnesota’s “working” at that time consisted partly of the fact that it had recently raised taxes.
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April 15, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Some taxpayers are aware that any refund on their return is their own money. On the other hand, many may be unware that the government got their money before they did. This takes place through the practice of withholding money from workers’ paychecks, a development dating to World War II. “Wars have always been the most important occasions for the introduction of new forms of taxation,” writes Robert Higgs (Crisis
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April 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Every well-informed person knows that upper-income taxpayers shoulder a disproportionate share of the nation’s fiscal burden. The problem is that most people aren’t well-informed. The Wall Street Journal reports: President Biden and Democratic tax raisers always say the rich don’t pay their “fair share.” Maybe one reason this line works politically is that most voters have no idea who really pays how much in taxes. “To the best of your
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