The Heartland Institute

Having begun to move away from gross receipts taxes (GRT) in 2005, New Mexico lawmakers are considering reinstating the tax on groceries in an effort to close the state's budget shortfall. The tax, projected to generate $200 million for the state if reinstated, has proven unpopular in the past and hindered the state's economic ...

Gov. Mark Parkinson's recommendation to use a cigarette tax increase to help cover Kansas's $300 million budget deficit should be worrisome not only to smokers, but also to nonsmokers and legislators who want to be fiscally responsible. Tobacco tax hikes encourage cross-border shopping and other tax avoidance measures, and they ...

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Americans were expected to spend $2.5 trillion on health care in 2009, or $8,160 per person--17.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Projections for 2018 put U.S. health care spending at $4.3 trillion, or $13,100 per person, primarily spent by large employers through full-coverage ...

Tobacco tax hikes like the one being discussed in Utah should be recognized for what they are: unstable and regressive tax increases targeting a minority of citizens, fueling unsustainable government spending, all wrapped in one fiscally irresponsible package. Tobacco tax hikes have at least four fundamental flaws: (1) They are ...

In 2008 the Bush administration s Treasury Department seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that stand behind a majority of the nation s $12 trillion mortgage market. Despite the stated goal of both the Bush and Obama administrations to shrink Freddie and Fannie s outsize influence ...

In recent weeks the idea of a " transaction tax" that would impose an apparently small fee on all stock, future, swap, credit default swap, and option transactions has gained significant support among some members of Congress and left-of-center advocacy groups. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and 25 other members of the House of Representatives ...

Amendments to the health reform legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate would impose a 75 percent discount on biologic drugs for patients in the Medicare Part D " doughnut hole," and would prohibit certain clinical trials for biosimilars. An amendment that would deny biologic drugs a full 12-year period without competition ...

As Florida policymakers take up the SunRail passenger rail proposal, the performance of existing passenger rail systems across the country should be part of their deliberations. In 2008 America's predominant passenger rail service, Amtrak, lost an average of $32 per passenger. High gasoline prices meant ridership on Amtrak was ...

The term property mitigation can refer to almost any effort or incentive to make a given building or area of land safer against the forces of nature. Policies promoting mitigation include everything from the prosaic (charging lower wind insurance premiums for houses built out of stone) to the ambitious (sweeping, invasive community ...

Alabama Revenue Commissioner Tim Russell recently called for requiring online retailers to collect sales taxes on goods purchased by the state's residents, an idea gaining traction in states across the country. It's a bad idea that will hurt business in the state and won't raise the expected revenue. Current Alabama law already ...

What the U.S. economy needs more than another pork-filled stimulus plan or massive new spending proposal is a cut in the corporate tax rate. The United States currently has the second-highest combined state and federal corporate tax rate in the industrialized world, at 39.1 percent. Twenty-four states have combined federal and ...

Illinois' alcohol tax increases, which the legislature pushed through to fund a $31 billion capital works plan, are beginning to have their troubling consequences. Neighboring states have dramatically lower alcohol taxes, and a large share of Illinois' population lives near these lower-taxed states. That's creating economic and ...

Federal legislators and many industry groups are calling for not only an extension, but a fourfold expansion, of the First Time Home Buyers Tax Credit program, at an estimated annual cost of $50 to $100 billion. The tax credit, originally signed into law as part of the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was ...

The Obama administration, with support from the majority party in Congress, is promoting a carbon emissions cap-and-trade plan that could spell disaster for the nation especially given the current delicate state of the U.S. economy. Legislation proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) already has passed the ...

The Chicago Sun-Times recently reported some very alarming facts about Illinois’ public pension system, among them: * Nearly 4,000 state retirees are receiving more than $100,000 per year in pension payouts; and * 14,280 retirees are making more than they earned during their highest-salaried year. While these extreme pensions represent ...

Given the enormous investment of current and future taxpayer dollars--$12.7 trillion--in remedying a credit crisis traceable in large part to policies of the Federal Reserve, there is a growing call to open to the public how the Fed conducts its business, which currently is a tightly guarded trade secret. Led by Rep. Ron Paul ...

If Longmont, Colorado s city council had its way, failing in the telecommunications industry a decade ago wouldn t get in the way of failing again, but this time on a grander scale. Thankfully, the voters of that city can put a stop to the folly in the November election. It s a lesson for all municipalities contemplating ...

Smokers have become a favorite target of many legislators across the country. Some policymakers seem to think taxing smokers is a win-win way to curb smoking and raise revenue, without hurting the economy. In practice, however, these taxes create more budget problems than they solve. As the tobacco tax revenue stream falls ...

As the economy remains in the doldrums, the unemployment compensation fund in Texas has become insolvent. The state's unemployment rate stood at 8 percent as of June. According to the Dallas Morning News, the state government paid out around $64 million in benefits in March, more than twice as much as in the same period ...

Even with one of the worst state economies in the nation, the California Assembly rejected a proposal to allow new oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara. The proposal, if passed, would have raised an estimated $100 million this fiscal year and an estimated $4 billion over the next decade. According to George Skelton ...