Economist Austan Goolsbee has a $44 billion idea called the “Simple Return”: Around two-thirds of taxpayers take only the standard deduction and do not itemize. Frequently, all of their income is solely from wages from one employer and interest income from one bank. For almost all of these people, the IRS already receives information about each of their sources of . . .
The Harvard economist (and blogger) Greg Mankiw has written an excellent primer on the Federal Reserve’s power to influence the economy, making much of the the fact that the Fed is politically independent and can therefore afford to ignore public sentiment more than politicians can. His piece got me thinking about what a lot of people have been thinking for . . .
This is the time of year when a lot of people give to charity, in part because of the holidays and in part because of year-end tax considerations. Below you will find a few loosely connected observations about charity and then, at the end, some questions for all of you. It is probably not fair that I am not answering . . .
The April 2, 2006, Freakonomics column is about tax cheating. This blog post supplies additional research material.