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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.
About the author
Scott Hodge is a long-time Washington, DC, policy expert who has never been afraid of challenging conventional wisdom and calling out the consequences of government tax and spending programs.
From 2000 to 2022, Scott was president and CEO of the Tax Foundation, one of the most influential think tanks in Washington, DC. He is now president emeritus and senior policy advisor at the Tax Foundation.
Over the past thirty years, Scott has been one of the most sought-after voices on tax policy. During that time, he has conducted over one thousand broadcast media interviews, appearing on business channels such as Fox Business, CNBC, and Bloomberg. His essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and CNN.com.
Scott has advised presidential candidates and members of Congress and has testified before congressional committees dozens of times on the very topics he addresses in Taxocracy.
Summary
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.
