If ever we need evidence of ideology run rampant, the House vote to eliminate the annual American Community Survey and the Economic Census to provide basic information on the state of businesses and industries in the country and data used for generating quarterly gross domestic product estimates is exhibit A.

This article is the first part of a two-part examination of the contentious issue of how state governments' provision of goods and services to the public should be taxed under a VAT.

The FairTax proposal, which now has fifty-four sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives, would institute a national retail sales tax to replace individual and corporate income taxes, payroll and self-employment taxes, and estate and gift taxes. The question of what sales-tax rate would be needed to replace the revenue...

Jan Sodersten will present a paper on the experience of European countries with various types of sales taxes and their reasons for switching to the value-added tax (VAT) at the end of the 1960s. Many analysts have argued that the European experience proves conclusively that a national retail sales...

The exemption of groceries serves the essential purpose of easing the fiscal burden on those with limited economic means. Economic analysis suggests, however, that this policy is not a desirable way to advance that purpose.

States should be allowed to impose reasonable information reporting requirements on out-of-state retailers who sell to state residents, to facilitate the collection of use tax on residents' out-of-state purchases.

Banking centers must offer their clients security; Dubai's banking sector could exist only because it was backed by an implicit security guarantee from the United States.

Moving toward summer, the buoyancy of hope for economic recovery will depend on the path of U.S. consumption, Chinese inflation, the Fed, and northern Europe's willingness to accommodate southern Europe's rising need to borrow.