Apr 27, 2021 | Testimony
On Tuesday, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow and MGA founder and CEO Alex Brill testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. The topic of the hearing was the tax treatment of energy. Brill spoke of the criticality of a “broad, efficient, technology-neutral tax policy geared toward encouraging less energy consumption and more renewable energy production” to working toward a reduction in U.S. reliance on fossil fuels—and ensuring a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Mar 23, 2021 | Testimony
On Tuesday, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow and MGA founder and CEO Alex Brill testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security. The topic of the hearing was the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs.
Sep 11, 2020 | Testimony
My testimony begins with an overview of the economic impact of the pandemic and our current economic situation.
Mar 6, 2018 | Testimony
The passage of time and changing circumstances have rendered the physical-presence requirement articulated in National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue, 386 U.S. 753, 758 (1967), and Quill Corporation v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298, 324-15 (1992), a harmful anachronism. Standard tools of economic analysis that the Court considered in Comptroller of the Treasury v. Wynne reveal that South Dakota’s sales and use tax regime, as amended by S.B. 106, promotes neutral treatment of in-state and interstate commerce. By contrast, the bright-line physical-presence requirement set forth in Bellas Hess and Quill forces states to extend what is in practice a discriminatory subsidy in favor of a specific class of out-of-state sellers, namely, those sellers who lack a physical presence within the state. On the facts of the challenged statute, there is no valid economic reason to mandate such a discriminatory subsidy.
Nov 7, 2017 | Testimony
We are scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit policy research entity. Dr. Satel is a practicing psychiatrist who has studied and researched a broad range of matters related to mental health policy and addiction, including tobacco harm reduction. Mr. Brill is an expert in public finance and health economics, with a concentration in the economic and public health implications of smoking and its alternatives. The views expressed here are ours alone and may or may not reflect the views of our colleagues.
Sep 14, 2017 | Testimony
The opportunity for fundamental and comprehensive tax reform is before this Committee for the first time in many decades. As every Member of this Committee well knows, the tax code has frequently and sometimes significantly changed over the last 30 years, but not since 1986 has it been truly reformed in a manner that sought to broaden the base – that is, eliminate special deductions, credits, and exclusions– while lowering statutory tax rates. As Senators Hatch, Wyden, Roberts, and Grassley know firsthand, that legislative process was arduous and sometimes controversial, but the 1986 Tax Reform Act did result in a simpler income tax code with a broader tax base and significantly lower statutory tax rates.
