● The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform-Why We Need It and What It Will Take
By Bruce Bartlett
Review via The Financial Times
America’s tax system is a mess. It is unfair, poorly understood and riddled with loopholes. It is ill-equipped to raise the revenues needed to deal with the debt crisis, still less the future needs of an ageing population. It is now over 25 years since it last underwent much reform. An overhaul is long overdue. The case for change is presented in The Benefit and the Burden, a succinct, lucid book by Bruce Bartlett, an economist who spent many years in government working for Republican congressmen and in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In Mr Bartlett’s view, higher tax revenues are needed to stabilise the US’s finances; one of the goals of tax reform should be to make the higher tax burden more bearable. But it will not happen unless there is a much better public understanding of how the tax system works.
