The Truth About Taxes & Reform

With a U.S. Presidential election less than a year away, and a still moribund economy struggling to climb out of a long period of sluggish growth, high joblessness, and a burgeoning fiscal debt burden, the issue of tax policy will be front and center in 2012.  With the sole exception of Mitt Romney, all the Republican candidates have outlined dramatic changes they would wish to pursue, to either the tax code itself, or to the rate structure and allowances.  And sooner or later Mr. Romney himself will follow suit; his main advisor, Columbia Business School’s Dean and putative Treasury Secretary Glenn Hubbard, is an ardent proponent of pro-growth tax reform based on flatter and lower rates, a broader tax base, and protection for savings and capital accumulation (as embodied, for example, in the X tax proposal of the late David Bradford at Princeton).  Indeed a future Secretary Hubbard, well-respected on both sides of the aisle in Washington, would be one of the brightest stars in any Romney-led firmament, and significant pro-growth reform would then be highly likely.