News – Matrix Global Advisors

Sep132017

Trump Says His Tax Break Will Get Companies to Hire More Workers. Companies Say It Won’t.

September 13, 2017Filed Under: Interviews

“Trump wants to bring that money back to the United States to spur jobs and growth, and he’s been aggressively pitching a plan to offer companies a large tax break if they bring all those dollars back to America soon. Under Trump’s proposal, companies would only have to pay a 10 percent tax on money they bring back — a process often called ‘repatriation’ — rather than the usual 35 percent. . . . The [George W. Bush] White House tried this once before, and the results were grim. . . . “

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Aug92017

Shop Online? Internet Retailers Have a Tax Advantage Congress Must End

August 9, 2017Filed Under: Op-Eds

In recent years, internet sales have grown by nearly 15 percent per year, compared to 4 percent per year for brick-and-mortar retail sales. Although e-commerce represents less than 9 percent of total retail sales, this shift in where we shop is eroding states’ sales tax base. Under the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, sellers without a physical presence in a state cannot be required to collect and remit that state’s sales tax. As a result, online sellers have an artificial competitive advantage over local brick-and-mortar sellers, who must collect sales tax from their customers. Congress needs to end this unfair tax advantage.

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Jun292017

Trump, Amazon, and Taxes

June 29, 2017Filed Under: News

Back in 2012, my AEI colleague Alex Brill wrote about the wisdom of combining internet sales taxes with income-tax base broadening. Back then, Congress was considering legislation, the Marketplace Equity Act, that would have permitted states to collect the sales tax they are owed when their residents purchase goods online from out-of-state sellers.

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May112017

Don’t Thwart an Ally in the War on Tobacco

May 11, 2017Filed Under: Op-Eds

As cigarette use decreases, it may be tempting to supplement declining tobacco tax revenues with a tax on e-cigarettes — a relatively new, less risky alternative to traditional cigarettes. Following actions by some European nations, the European Commission is now contemplating the proper tax treatment of e-cigarettes and has just finalised a public consultation on the topic. Taxing e-cigarettes would have a negative effect on nascent, but important, public health gains.

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Apr52017

MGA’s Alex Brill on CNBC’s Squawkbox

April 5, 2017Filed Under: Interviews

“The fundamental idea is that owners of capital are going to put that capital at risk for an investment, and they’re going to be asking the question, “What rate of return am I going to get on that investment after I pay taxes?” They’re not curious what their pre-tax rate of return is. They’re curious about their after-tax rate of return.”

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Mar312017

MGA’s Alex Brill on “Rush to Reason” on Denver’s KLZ-560 AM

March 31, 2017Filed Under: Interviews

“What are we going to do about health care? Well, it seems at the moment we’re not doing much of anything because the lawmakers in Washington can’t decide the answer to that question. My view is that Republicans have spent a long time talking about what they don’t want in health care. They’ve run for seven years against Obamacare. I think that’s reasonable because there are a lot of flaws in that program. But they’ve spent almost no time clearly defining what it is that they want. And that’s in part why they faulted last Friday and couldn’t get a bill passed out of the House of Representatives.”

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Mar312017

Repeal and Replace May Have Failed Anyway

March 31, 2017Filed Under: Op-Eds

Pundits have posited every imaginable reason for the failure of the GOP to get their health care reform bill through the first big hurdle: passage on the House floor. As we all know too well, Speaker Ryan pulled the bill just minutes before a vote was scheduled, when it was absolutely clear that a majority of support could not be reached. But would success have ushered in a new health care paradigm? I doubt it.

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Mar292017

Trump and House Tax Plans Have One Thing in Common: They Likely Hit Nonprofits Hard

March 29, 2017Filed Under: Interviews

“If the tax incentive [for charitable giving] goes away, people will still undoubtedly give to charity, said Alex Brill, research fellow at AEI who published the findings. The AEI model accounts for it. But gifts from wealthy donors could decrease significantly. ‘There’s consensus that the tax break definitely matters. People are always going to quibble about the exact magnitude of the impact,’ Brill said, citing end-of-the-year giving as one example.

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Feb232017

‘Ambitious’ and ‘Aggressive’ Timing for Mnuchin’s Tax Plan May Not Play Out, Experts Say

February 23, 2017Filed Under: Interviews

“The Trump administration could face some trouble getting its tax reform through by August, [said] Alex Brill…. ‘There’s only so much that Congress can process at the same time. I was very pleased to hear [Treasury Secretary Mnuchin] put an emphasis and a priority on tax reform, an aggressive schedule of a bill signing in August, but we do need to recognize that there’s a whole other conversation in Washington about [Affordable Care Act] repeal, repeal and replace, or repeal and repair that is potentially in conflict,’ simply due to time constraints, Brill said.”

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Feb102017

MGA’s Alex Brill on CNBC’s Squawkbox

February 10, 2017Filed Under: Interviews

Alex Brill visited the set of Squawkbox to talk about the tax reform debate: “Tax reform is by definition a game about winners and losers. If there aren’t winners and losers, it’s not tax reform. So there should be no surprise that there are people who are upset about the things that are being discussed, but that doesn’t make it a bad idea…. The idea…is to create a level playing field. There are winners and losers today as a result of the tax code, and if we can clean that system up, we can create fairness between debt and equity, between corporate and non-corporate, between domestically domiciled corporations and foreign competitors.”

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