Toward Fundamental Tax Reform

With tax reform once again on the political agenda, the American Enterprise Institute asked nine of the world’s leading tax policy scholars, including a Nobel Prize winner, to prepare papers outlining their own ideas about fundamental tax reform. After preparing these papers, the scholars gathered in Washington with the editors to discuss their differences and seek common ground.

Toward Fundamental Tax Reform provides readers with concise but varying perspectives on the possibilities of tax reform. It also focuses attention on key questions in the scholarly debate: Would a different tax code dramatically alter the functioning of the economy? How much damage does current law do? Can relatively small changes to the tax code deliver most of the benefits of more dramatic reforms such as the flat tax? Are political forces that oppose efficient tax systems simply too powerful to overcome? Will tax reform inevitably harm the poor? Can a tax reform, if enacted, be sustained?

Toward Fundamental Tax Reform collects these landmark papers in a single volume and includes two additional chapters by the editors that draw on a lively interplay that occurred among the scholars. Together, these efforts provide an invaluable and often entertaining glimpse of the future of tax reform, as well as a guide to the current thinking of our nation’s leading scholars.


Click here to view the full text and press release.

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About the Author

 

Kevin A.
Hassett

  • Kevin A. Hassett is the John G. Searle Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is also a resident scholar and AEI's director of economic policy studies.


    Before joining AEI, Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia (University) Business School. He served as a policy consultant to the US Department of the Treasury during the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.


    Hassett has also been an economic adviser to presidential candidates since 2000, when he became the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain during that year's presidential primaries. He served as an economic adviser to the George W. Bush 2004 presidential campaign, a senior economic adviser to the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and an economic adviser to the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign.


    Hassett is the author or editor of many books, among them "Rethinking Competitiveness" (2012), "Toward Fundamental Tax Reform" (2005), "Bubbleology: The New Science of Stock Market Winners and Losers" (2002), and "Inequality and Tax Policy" (2001). He is also a columnist for National Review and has written for Bloomberg.


    Hassett frequently appears on Bloomberg radio and TV, CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and "PBS NewsHour," among others. He is also often quoted by, and his opinion pieces have been published in, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.


    Hassett has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College.




  • Phone: 202-862-7157
    Email: khassett@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Emma Bennett
    Phone: 202-862-5862
    Email: emma.bennett@aei.org

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