May 07, 2008

When it comes to tax policy, change is bad

"when it comes to regulations, one should never arbitrarily increase the complexity or uncertainty of the law.

Complexity is bad because it ups compliance costs, often makes evasion easier, and because complexity itself increases uncertainty: as tax laws proliferate, it becomes harder to know whether you are in compliance. It also makes the government's administrative overhead multiply like those bacteria that can kill you in five minutes after first contact.

Uncertainty is bad because it reduces the ability of people and corporations to plan for the future. It's hard to estimate your ROI if the tax laws that govern your investment change every year.

Change is bad in general because every time the tax law changes, your nation experiences a sudden loss of human capital: all the understanding of how the old law becomes useless, and people have to spend valuable hours learning to understand the new law."
--Megan McArdle

Posted by Matt Bruce at May 7, 2008 04:21 PM
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