Romney's tax plan

[KC]

Those charts were useful, Peter, but is there any way to know whether or not tax cuts were really the cause of the revenue spikes? I've begun to look at several blogs and articles about both the Bush and Reagan tax cuts from sources as left as Obama supporters to sources who credit the heritage foundation with most of their info, but it seems like all the most anyone could say was that there was no way of establishing a direct causal relationship. If we could find a way of weeding out other factors, like the business cycle...

Anyway I'd like to learn more about tax policy. I'm open minded as long as the goal of more revenue is accomplished. I'm not looking to starve the beast either but we definitely need spending cuts in real ways, too.

[Peter1469]

Those charts were useful, Peter, but is there any way to know whether or not tax cuts were really the cause of the revenue spikes? I've begun to look at several blogs and articles about both the Bush and Reagan tax cuts from sources as left as Obama supporters to sources who credit the heritage foundation with most of their info, but it seems like all the most anyone could say was that there was no way of establishing a direct causal relationship. If we could find a way of weeding out other factors, like the business cycle...

Anyway I'd like to learn more about tax policy. I'm open minded as long as the goal of more revenue is accomplished. I'm not looking to starve the beast either but we definitely need spending cuts in real ways, too.

The economy is not static, it is dynamic. So many factors go into those revenue spikes. If you want to gain more confidence that those spikes were causes, at least in part, by tax cuts, look at other periods of time were taxes were cut, such as under JFK and RR.

The problem with the claim that tax cuts lower revenue are based in static accounting models. They don't take into account any economic change from the tax rate- for good or bad.