The Market Center Blog

Center's Information
Coalition for Tax Competition
Foundation's Tax Competition Project
Board of Directors
Current Staff
Former Research Fellows

Center's Information

     The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) is a non-profit organization created to lobby lawmakers in favor of market liberalization. The top project of CF&P is the Coalition for Tax Competition, which is fighting to preserve jurisdictional tax competition, sovereignty, and financial privacy.

     The Center for  Freedom and Prosperity Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3), tax-exempt educational organization affiliated with the CF&P. The immediate priority of the Foundation is to publish studies and conduct seminars analyzing the benefits of jurisdictional tax competition, financial privacy and fiscal sovereignty. In addition, the Foundation will produce analysis and reports on economic issues, brief lawmakers and the media on the benefits of limited government, and educate voters on the need for competitive markets. Donations to the Foundations are tax deductible. 

     The Coalition for Tax Competition (CTC) will organize opposition to the multiple threats facing taxpayers. Working with targeted governments, financial institutions, multi-national businesses, and interested individuals, the CTC will fight against proposals to undermine financial privacy and create a global tax cartel. This includes: 

• Thwarting the OECD's attempt to create a cartel of high-tax nations – Tax competition should be celebrated, not persecuted. High tax regimes should not be able to shield themselves from globalization.
• Protecting world commerce and open trade – Discriminatory financial protectionism against low-tax nations is a bad idea and should be stopped.
• Preserving the ability of sovereign jurisdictions to determine their own tax policy – High-tax nations are trying to export their tax laws to other nations, in effect trying to turn them into adjunct tax collectors. Even more troubling, the OECD is trying to dictate tax policy in these low-tax jurisdictions.
• Resisting the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) attack on financial privacy – Laws against criminals and their proceeds are desirable, but not at the expense of Constitutional freedoms and civil liberties. Nor should concerns about money laundering be allowed to serve as a stalking horse for tax collectors. 

Coalition for Tax Competition

     In today's global economy, governments face pressure to reduce tax rates in order to keep investment and entrepreneurial talent from moving to lower-tax environments. This is what is known as tax competition and it is an important check on excessive government power and control, both domestically and internationally. 

     High-tax nations, not surprisingly, want to stop tax competition. Working through the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), these countries are seeking to dictate tax policy around the world in order to protect themselves from competition. At their behest, the OECD has launched a campaign to shut down small low-tax regimes (the so-called tax havens), and also is trying to dictate tax policy in larger nations, including the United States, by identifying supposedly "unfair" tax policies that attract investment from overseas. 

     The OECD plan is wrong. Tax competition between countries should be celebrated, not persecuted. As a Heritage Foundation paper on the issue states, tax competition "forces politicians to be more responsible, pushing tax rates down and allowing people to enjoy more of the money they earn. Tax competition is a particularly good thing for the United States, drawing savings, investment, and skilled labor into the economy."

     The OECD's campaign against tax competition is ill-advised for a number of reasons. For instance, it is: 

• An Attack on Taxpayers. The OECD is trying to create a cartel of high-tax nations. This arrangement – sort of an OPEC for politicians – would mean higher taxes and undermine any hope for meaningful tax reform.
• An Attack on Free Trade and Global Commerce. The OECD urges member nations to penalize low-tax regimes with severe and discriminatory financial protectionism. In effect, the OECD wants to impose a financial blockade against targeted nations. 
• An Attack on Sovereignty. The OECD not only is trying to bully "tax havens" into raising their tax rates and eliminating financial privacy, but also asserts the right to interfere with American tax laws. Sovereign nations should be able to determine their own tax policies. 
• An Attack on Privacy. An implicit feature of the OECD campaign is that governments should be allowed to tax income and activities that take place outside their borders. This means that privacy will be sacrificed to make life easier for tax collectors. Moreover, governments want to force financial service companies and professional service providers to spy on their customers to help track down additional tax revenue.

     For more information, or to join the Coalition for Tax Competition, please contact us at ctc@freedomandprosperity.org.

Center Freedom and Prosperity Foundation's Tax Competition Project

     The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation was founded in October, 2000, to address the rapidly developing issue of jurisdictional tax competition. The Foundation will provide needed balance to this debate, and also address related issues such as fiscal sovereignty and financial privacy. The Foundation's first major project will be the Tax Competition Project. The Project will focus on research and education.

Research
     The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation will sponsor research on the subject of tax competition.  The research will spell out in understandable terms why tax competition is needed and why the OECD's plan is wrong. The Foundation will distribute policy papers, publish a newsletter, release analysis to the media, and develop an Internet page that will serve as a repository of useful information on tax competition.

     Our research will explain the benefits of tax competition, but will also explore important related issues such as financial privacy, fiscal sovereignty, territorial taxation, money laundering, tax evasion, and economic growth. Knowing the many demands on the time of policy makers and opinion leaders, the papers produced by the project will be brief, succinctly explaining why an issue is important and how it relates to the broader debate.

Education
     Our message will be targeted to policy makers, the media, and grassroots. To educate policy makers from the legislative and executive branches, we will conduct briefings, organize discussion groups, and set up a series of seminars. We also will distribute our research material, along with important publications from other organizations.

     Our media outreach will focus on the major newspapers, radio and television outlets, and our products will consist of editorials, media briefings, press conferences, editorial board meetings, and TV and radio interviews. 

     To educate the citizenry, the Foundation will develop a direct mail package. This package will be sent to tax activists and a broad base of potential supporters. The mailing will educate taxpayers on the principles of tax competition and show them ways they can get more involved in the debate.

Board of Directors

John Blundell
     John Blundell was educated at King's School, Macclesfield, and at the London School of Economics. He headed the Press, Research and Parliamentary Liaison Office at the Federation of Small Businesses from 1977 to 1982, and was a Lambeth Borough councillor from 1978 to 1982. From 1982 to 1993 he lived in the US where he was, inter alia, president of the Institute for Humane Studies (1988–91); president of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (1987–91); president of the board of the Congressional Schools of Virginia (1988–92); and president of the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundations (1991–92). He assumed his duties as general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs on 1 January 1993. He also served as co-founder and chairman, from 1993 to 1997, of the Institute for Children, Boston, MA; founder director (1991–3), Institute for Justice, Washington DC; international trustee (1988–93), The Fraser Institute, Vancouver, BC; and founder trustee of Buckeye Institute, Dayton, OH. He is a director of Fairbridge and of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (UK) and chairman of the executive committee of the board of Atlas Economic Research Foundation (USA). He is also a board member of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA; of the Institute of Economic Studies (Europe) in Paris, France; and a former Board member of the Mont Pélerin Society.
 

Veronique de Rugy, Ph.D.
     Veronique de Rugy is a co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. She was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Her research interests include the federal budget, homeland security, tax competition, and financial privacy issues.

Ms. de Rugy is the coauthor of Action ou Taxation, published in Switzerland in 1996. She is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

Ms. de Rugy earned a MA in economics from the University of Paris IX-Dauphine and a PhD in economics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She previously directed academic programs for the Institute for Humane Studies-Europe in France.
 

Dan Mitchell, Ph.D.
     Daniel J. Mitchell is a co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. Mitchell serves as one of the Cato Institute's top experts on tax policy and the economy; Dr. Mitchell advocates supply-side tax cuts and fundamental tax reform. Dr. Mitchell also is the nation's leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations. His September 2000 analysis of the OECD's "harmful tax competition" initiative was the opening salvo in a campaign that ended with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill announcing in May 2001 that the United States could no longer support international proposals to persecute low-tax jurisdictions. He has now turned his attention to the EU's infamous "Savings Tax Directive" and a UN proposal to undermine the sovereign right of nations to determine their own tax policy.

Dr. Mitchell is one of the nation's leading experts on tax reform and supply-side tax policy, and he knows how to explain the politics and complexities of tax policy in easy-to-understand terms. As former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes said of Mitchell's 1996 book, The Flat Tax: Freedom, Fairness, Jobs, and Growth, "Mitchell marvelously demonstrates how the flat tax will rip away the principal source of political pollution in Washington." In addition to tax policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security privatization - particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts.

Dr. Mitchell's by-line can be found in such national publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Investor's Business Daily, and Washington Times. He is a frequent guest on radio and television and a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. Dr. Mitchell holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and master's and bachelor's degrees in economics from the University of Georgia. Prior to joining Cato, Mitchell was a senior fellow with The Heritage Foundation, and an economist for Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee.. He also served on the 1988 Bush/Quayle transition team and was Director of Tax and Budget Policy for Citizens for a Sound Economy.
 

Andrew F. Quinlan
     Andrew F. Quinlan is the President and co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. CF&P is the leading voice in the international fight for tax competition, financial privacy, and fiscal sovereignty. In just four-years of existence, CF&P has dramatically altered how policy makers view tax competition between nations. Prior to the CF&P's involvement, tax competition was viewed as "harmful." Many policy makers now understand that tax competition is a liberalizing force in the world economy.

Mr. Quinlan has briefed more than 300 Capitol Hill offices on the benefits of tax competition and has educated key Bush Administration staff from the White House and several cabinet level departments. In the last few years, more than 120 members of Congress have sent letters to the Bush Administration in support of jurisdictional tax competition. Mr. Quinlan has traveled and lectured on tax competition and information exchange all over the world including London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Ottawa, Panama City, Hamilton, Bridge Town, New York and Miami. The efforts of Mr. Quinlan and CF&P have been profiled in several international publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, U.S. News and World Report, Money, The Financial Times and the National Journal. Mr. Quinlan publishes an e-mail newsletter that is read all over the world and he is quoted often in major newspapers and has appeared on several television and radio shows.

Mr. Quinlan served as a Senior Economic Analyst for the Republican National Committee before working for more than seven years as a top staff member for New Jersey Congressman Jim Saxton -- the last four years as senior advisor to the Joint Economic Committee. 

Current Staff

Eugene Slaven -- Associate Director
Eugene Slaven recently joined the Center for Freedom and Prosperity as the organization's Associate Director. In his role, Mr. Slaven helps coordinate and implement educational and outreach efforts to derail anti-tax competition initiatives. He briefs lawmakers and nonprofits on the benefits of tax competition and explains to key audiences why campaigns to thwart tax competition will hurt the global economy and undermine American competitiveness. He also conducts research and writes on tax competition issues.

Mr. Slaven received his Masters Degree in Political Management from The George Washington University in May 2007. While in school, he interned for the Public Affairs Council, with the primary responsibility of researching best practices and strategies of International Lobbying.

In the 2006 Election cycle, Mr. Slaven was the Opposition Research Coordinator for Strategic Media Services, a Republican media buying firm. He was responsible for researching when and where the opposition was buying time and how much money they were spending in each market.

Prior to joining the CF&P, Mr. Slaven was the Government Affairs Intern at the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). He prepared daily issue briefs on the media coverage of the real-estate finance industry, published advocacy updates, and drafted and edited letters to members and policymakers.

Mr. Slaven had a professional background in market research, operational management, and business-to-business sales. He has a BS in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.
 

Former Research Fellows

Sven Larson, Ph.D.
     Sven Larson is a research consultant with Valfard Policy Research in Saratoga Springs, NY. He holds a Ph.D. in social sciences with major in economics from Roskilde University, Denmark. He has taught economics and European integration at Skidmore College, and economics and the welfare state at his Danish alma mater. He is researching issues in contemporary economics, public policy and personal finance for research institutes and policy centers. He has also authored a tiered privatization model for phasing out social security, which he has presented at various conferences on institutional investments. In 2000 he published his doctoral thesis, 'Uncertainty, Macroeconomic Stability and the Welfare State', which laid out a new argument for limited government, based on Keynesian economic theory."
 

Yesim Yilmaz, Ph.D.
     Yesim Yilmaz directs the Business Studies department for SMARTHINKING, Inc., an online education company. She also consults with international organizations and policy institutions on a broad range of issues covering education and public finance. Yesim's research interests include local taxation, and education finance and its decentralization. Her recent projects include a comparative study of the fiscal capacity of local and state governments in the US (for the joint Urban Institute/Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) and a study on the financing of secondary education in the developing countries (for the World Bank).  Yesim's work on market based alternatives to quality and safety regulations have been published in the US (by the Cato Institute), England, India and Brazil. Yesim a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University and a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. 

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