The Tax Foundation’s Ten principles of sound tax policy are a must-read for those influ­encing tax policy. I think the list can be further refined down to about half that, but maybe they wanted to get an even ten.

For instance, maintaining the neutrality of the system (#2) will result in broad bases (#3). It’s when the system gets less neutral (i.e. favours certain groups or behav­iours) that the base is narrowed. Various special interest deduc­tions put in place to encourage desirable behaviour or punish undesirable behaviour have narrowed the base and caused rates to be kept high unnecessarily.

Harmo­nization of federal, state/province and local/municipal taxes (#10) is part and parcel with creating a simple tax system (#4). The provincial government has been criti­cized recently about its reluc­tance to harmonize Ontario’s sales tax with the Federal GST. The premier’s misguided reasoning for the reluc­tance? It would place a tax on certain exempt items, thus elimi­nating some of the complexity and non-neutrality in the tax.

Tax stability (#5) is important because it makes them predictable, which is also aided when there is no retroac­tivity (#6). When politi­cians can make changes to taxes retroactive, tax is not predictable. The Canadian government announced recently the retroactive increase in the Basic Personal tax credit. You’re unlikely to hear anyone complain about this, but nonetheless it isn’t ideal tax policy.

Trans­parency (#1) is important no matter what government initiative we’re talking about, and an open process (#9) is one manifes­tation of this requirement. All the workings of a democ­ratic government must be open to its citizens and open to criticism and debate. Tax is no different from anything else in this respect.

So I humbly put forward my own principles of sound tax policy: simplicity, neutrality, trans­parency, and predictability. I think that basically covers it at a more abstract level than the Tax Foundation’s ten.