At this event, Alan Viard will present the X tax proposal while James Mackie of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute will offer commentary.

This book by Alan Viard and Robert Carroll proposes to completely replace the income tax system with a progressive consumption tax.

Two months ago, the House adopted a budget resolution that outlines the Republican majority's ambitious plans to slow the growth of federal entitlement spending. If implemented properly, entitlement spending restraint can address the long-term fiscal imbalance in a way that promotes economic growth and freedom.

Supercommittee Republicans offered a plan to eliminate tax preferences and reduce tax rates, as in the 1986 bipartisan tax reform. They argued that high tax rates would squelch economic growth.  They didn't make the case that their proposals would also address income inequality. But Paul Ryan, in a paper based largely on a CBO analysis of income trends between 1979 and 2007, has done so.

The White House has proposed a “Buffett Rule” mandating that taxpayers earning more than $1 million pay at least 30% of their income in federal income taxes. The unfairness the Obama administration has identified is only one limited, albeit  eye-catching, manifestation of more systemic problems in the tax code.

Base broadening must be approached with caution because some base-broadening measures make the tax system less neutral, impeding economic efficiency. Also, income tax base broadening cannot eliminate, and may even reinforce, the income tax's central flaw--its penalty on saving.

Competing currents will continue to push the state corporate income tax in opposite directions.Ultimately, the only certainty is that this tax will remain an active and hotly debated part of the state revenue landscape well into the future.

The "Buffett Rule's" stated goal of making millionaires pay the same tax rates as the middle class is appealing. Unfortunately, the proposal is based on inaccurate claims about the tax system and its enactment would penalize the investment that fuels long-run economic growth.