Tax Chats

Which is the worst Tax Expenditure?: A Chat with Adam Michel

Dyreng and Hoopes Season 1 Episode 149

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Jeff and Scott chat with Adam Michel of the Cato Institute about tax expenditures. Adam currently has on his X account the Tax Expenditure Madness brackets (also on his substack: https://adamnmichel.substack.com/). Adam sets up brackets like the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament,  but instead of pitting basketball teams against each other to establish the best team*, he has tax expenditures competing to determine which is the worst expenditure. Jeff, Scott and Adam chat about several sets of tax expenditures, and offer their somewhat tongue-in-cheek opinion about which ones are worst.


*For example, by establishing that UNC women's basketball has won a national championship 1 time, compared to Duke's 0 times, or that UNC men's basketball has won the NCAA tournament 6 times, compared to Duke's 5 times. Of note is that of all teams with over 20 games played in the NCAA men's tournament, Duke has the highest winning percentage, which is only to say that they win a lot before they ultimately lose--they choke under pressure in the end.