Fundamental Tax Reform: The Purple Tax Plan

Roundtable – co-organized with Avenir Suisse – on fundamental tax reform with Laurence Kotlikoff and a focus on his “Purple Tax Plan”.

Professor Kotlikoff is Professor of Economics at Boston University, as well as a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Director of the Tax Analysis Center. An active columnist, Professor Kotlikoff’s columns and blogs have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Forbes, The Economist, and other major publications. In addition, he is a frequent guest on major television and radio stations. In 2014, he was named by The Economist as one of the world’s 25 most influential economists. He has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions to committees of Congress including the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee.

Professor Kotlikoff’s “Purple Tax Plan” suggests to replace the federal personal and corporate income taxes as well as the estate and gift tax with a broad-based, low-rate, progressive consumption tax and a low-rate, progressive inheritance tax. It also seeks to make the highly regressive FICA payroll tax highly progressive and to run the highly progressive Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credits through the FICA tax.