October 27, 2008

Best of the Blogosphere: Small Businesses, Redistribution, Corporate Taxes and More

by Matt Moon

Good Monday morning. The blogosphere has been kind to the Tax Foundation's work on federal and state issues this past week. Here are the best hits:

• The Weekly Standard Blog uses Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge's study on "nonpayers" in the federal income tax system to explain that politicians "increasingly use tax policy instead of direct spending to channel government money to favored groups and causes."
• Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun writes about Maryland's slide from 24th to 45th in our State Business Tax Climate Index on his "Economic Navigation and Sightseeing" Blog, and says in a parallel column that "to say we should always leave Maryland's budget to a few government professionals is to deny the possibilities of democracy and opportunities to make the state competitive."
• Donny Deutsch and Larry Kudlow give a shout out to the Tax Foundation's Presidential Candidate Tax Plan Comparison on The Big Idea Blog.
• The National Taxpayers Union's Government Bytes! Blog uses Tax Foundation Tax Counsel Joseph Henchman's study on North Dakota Measure 2, an initiative on the November ballot in the Peace Garden State that would cut the personal income tax in half and the corporate income tax by 15 percent.
• The Economic Policy Review Blog, produced by students at Harvard Business School, cites our studies on how U.S. corporate income tax rates are increasingly out of line by international standards, pointing out that it's "a terrible way to generate revenue" because "the US tends to have a much narrower base of corporate profits from which it can extract revenues than do other countries."
• Jeff Cornwall of Belmont University posts Robert Carroll's new study on the impact of tax rate increases on small businesses on his blog, The Entrepreneurial Mind, noting that "why we are even considering adding tax disincentives to the only sector in our economy generating significant growth and new jobs (i.e., small business) is chilling."
• Brian Simpson over at RedState talks about who benefits and who doesn't when it comes to government spending, posting a past study we've done on who pays America's tax burden vs. who receives government spending.