Taxes and Budget

Philadelphia’s proposed $1 rideshare tax attempts to address school funding shortfalls. The city should reject narrowly targeted taxes on app-based services and instead pursue broader, more neutral revenue mechanisms such as property or income taxes.

The Canada Strong Fund is trying to be a sovereign wealth fund, development bank, commercial investor, industrial policy vehicle, and retail savings product all at once. Until Ottawa clearly defines its purpose, it risks becoming a debt-financed vehicle searching for a rationale.

Watch ITIF’s Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness' webinar featuring leading experts who will discuss what is driving Canada’s capital exodus and what it will take to fix it.

The government-funded research initiatives that sustain our intellectual infrastructure—the body of scientific knowledge that underpins success in all other domains—must continue and receive more support than they have previously.

In the short term, Congress should move quickly to reauthorize CISA 2015 and fund the agency’s operations, even if the overall government funding fight continues. Then, to keep CISA fully operational in the future, Congress also should create a dedicated funding stream so the agency doesn’t have to rely so heavily on appropriations.

A proposed patent tax would punish startups, weaken U.S. competitiveness, and gut a system that has powered American innovation for centuries—all without solving the budget problem it aims to address.

Canada has zero entries among the world’s top 50 science and tech clusters. Waterloo is the best candidate for elevation. To make that happen, the federal and Ontario governments should create an incentive: Tech start-ups based in Waterloo, as well as firms outside Canada that relocate meaningful R&D and innovation production to the region, will pay no tax for a decade.

Policymakers must justify why they should be allowed to tax the major digital companies differently from the leading firms in other industries. This challenge explains why so much of the DST debate has centered around obscure and abstract notions of a company’s “physical presence” and whether the company’s users “create value.”

Congress has authorized $20 billion over five years to fund the National Science Foundation’s Technology Innovation Partnership, but lawmakers have appropriated just $410 million. To win the techno-economic war with China, America needs the TIP directorate to be fully funded.

Watch now for a virtual panel discussion with top experts as they explored the technological feasibility and legislative pathway for how a commercial trucking RUC can serve as the foundation for a sustainable, long-term solution to America’s transportation funding crisis.