Taxocracy

Book excerpt: Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life won’t help you lower your tax bill, but it will help you understand how politicians use taxes to influence our lives, how taxes harm the economy, and why we need a simpler tax system. Did you ever wonder why the costs of health care, housing, and college tuition keep going up? Or how your neighbor could afford that fancy electric car? Or why there are so many hard seltzers on the market? Your first guess might not be “taxes,” but they play a big role. We live in a world ruled by taxes—a taxocracy. History is full of misguided tax policies that led to “see-through” buildings, tax-free attics, three-wheeled cars, women in children’s clothing, and baked chips to go along with our hard seltzer. Written by former Tax Foundation CEO Scott Hodge, Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life uses amusing lessons from past tax policies gone wrong to explore how the US tax code caused serious consequences, affecting how we get our health insurance, the price of a college education, what car we buy, where we bank, and, in some cases, even when we die. Taxocracy outlines economic principles for designing a tax code that doesn’t rule our daily lives—a tax code that promotes economic growth, free-enterprise, and takes the politics out of tax policy.