The Heartland Institute

Yesterday, at the Republican National Convention, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice gave a superb speech covering many important issues. One issue she touched on that regrettably hasn’t been talked about enough this campaign season is education reform. For the United States to have sustained economic prosperity ...

Corporate Income Taxes Problem All 50 states currently have a higher combined federal and state corporate tax rate than France, whose rate is third-highest among OECD countries 1. Although corporate income taxes make up a fairly minor part of state tax revenue, they have a harmful impact on economic behavior. Nonetheless, many ...

In states and municipalities across the country, the high cost of traditional defined-benefit public pensions has become a hot-button issue as unfunded liabilities have raced out of control. These increasing liabilities are further complicated by the fact that in many instances the regulators controlling pension funds have overestimated ...

Myth 1: A tax on Internet sales just enables states to collect taxes they are already legally entitled to collect. Fact: A state is not legally entitled to collect taxes from Internet sellers with no physical presence in that state. In Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that a mail-order or ...

Problem States across the country continue to struggle with balancing their budgets as a result of increasing spending and a lagging economy. Many states also have accumulated massive amounts of debt that taxpayers will have to pay due to years of overspending combined with state employee pensions and benefits. Thirty-one states ...

With transportation coffers barely able to maintain highways, let alone adding new capacity to relieve congestion, many transportation economists and urban planners have concluded that the best solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement variable pricing on all congested freeways. At the same time, many political scientists ...

With transportation coffers barely able to maintain highways, let alone adding new capacity to relieve congestion, many transportation economists and urban planners have concluded that the best solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement variable pricing on all congested freeways. At the same time, many political scientists ...

Hydraulic fracturing has enabled profitable extraction of oil and gas in diverse areas of the country. As a result, many states sitting atop the country’s shale formations are reconsidering the way they tax these resources, to fill budget holes. Many of these debates are occurring in states with unconventional deposits and where ...

Record high levels of unemployment and record low reserve funds have placed great pressure on the federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) tax and benefit system. Between 2008 and 2011, $174 billion was paid in unemployment taxes while $450 billion was paid out in benefits, a gap of $276 billion. In 2011 alone, employers and ...

The Social Security Act of 1935 established the federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system, which pays benefits to workers who are laid off. Basic UI benefits are funded by payroll taxes on employers, but in recent years Congress has used general federal revenues to fund a range of extra benefits. With the recent recession ...

In this paper I analyze the provision of unemployment insurance in an environment with unobservable job offers and unobservable employment status. Both rejection of suitable offers and unreported employment income represent unemployment insurance fraud. I analyze US data characterizing the prevalence of both types of fraud, and ...

Congestion pricing use has been limited in the United States because of political, institutional, and public acceptance concerns. The Federal Highway Administration, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and National Cooperative Highway Research Program sponsored a scanning study of Europe and Singapore ...

States are beginning to turn away from baseline budgeting, a method that has proven ineffective in keeping the size of government to a responsible level. They are moving toward zero-based and performance-based budgeting, which has proven effective in cutting deficits. Baseline budgeting merely builds on the government’s preceding ...

States report that their public-employee pensions are underfunded by a total of $438 billion, but a more accurate accounting demonstrates that they are actually underfunded by over $3 trillion. The accounting methods that states currently use to measure their liabilities assume plans can earn high investment without risk. Should ...

Highway congestion occurs when a vehicle causes delay to other vehicles on the road, resulting in longer and less reliable travel times, the use of additional fuel, and other costs to the economy. According to one widely cited study, in 2005 highway congestion resulted in 4.2 billion hours of delay and 2.9 billion gallons ...

States and local jurisdictions are increasingly discussing congestion pricing as a strategy for improving transportation system performance. In fact, many transportation experts believe that congestion pricing offers promising opportunities to costeffectively reduce traffic congestion, improve the reliability of highway system performance ...

Introduction by Steven Stanek Managing Editor Budget & Tax News The Heartland Institute The more government spends, the more it taxes. The more government taxes, the more it spends. That is why tax and expenditure limitations increasingly are being viewed favorably by tax and government watchdogs. Measures to limit how much ...

Public sector employers and employees need and will be seeking better results and flexibility from their core defined contribution retirement plans. While it is not expected that public employers will move away from their core defined benefit plans as a primary method of delivering retirement benefits, interest in defined contribution ...

Growing congestion in the U.S. transportation network poses a substantial threat to the U.S. economy and to the quality of life of millions of Americans. According to the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), in 2003, congestion in the top 85 U.S. urban areas caused 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and 2.3 billions gallons ...

An ominous storm cloud is gathering across the horizon as American governments try to pay for the lucrative pension promises made to their employees. And these clouds are not just over a few skies. They are virtually everywhere. Government employee pension systems across the nation are in crisis. The city of San Diego is now ...