Tariff Primer

Note: this unedited article may be used within a new chapter in my inflation primer.

The topic of tariffs became of extreme importance in 2025, courtesy of American President Trump’s trade war on the rest of the world. In the modern meaning, a tariff is a tax on imports or more rarely, exports. (In practice, “export taxes” seems to be used in the financial media.) The origin of the term is that it referred to tables, coming from the Arabic ta’rif (a notification or announcement, see reference by Paul Anthony Jones below). The tables were of fees paid by traders, and so the meaning of the word in European languages evolved to refer to fees. In English, the meaning became more specialised to just refer to import/export taxes.

Principles Of Canadian Municipal Finance (And Why A Land Value Tax Is Inferior)

The funding of Canadian municipal governments is not normally thought of as interesting topic; even Canadian fixed income investors are not particularly excited about it. However, there are two side issues that are of general interest. The first question is: what happens to Canadian municipalities if the housing bubble pops? (As a spoiler, not very much.) The second question is the feasibility of a Land Value Tax (LVT) which is a concept that gets some people on the internet very excited. I will then outline why a LVT is inferior to the Canadian property tax system (which is not that different than the American system for that discussion).

Book Review: The Benefit And The Burden

Bruce Bartlett published "The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform -- Why We Need It And What It Will Take" in 2012. The book offers an introduction to how tax policy is set in the United States. The political situation has obviously changed since the book was published, but the historical background is useful to provide context. The text is definitely not "in paradigm" with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), but this does not matter when discussing the narrow topic of tax reform. This article also explains why I am skeptical that tax reform will be passed any time soon.

How To Deal With Imported Inflation...

Although I should be enjoying the Fête Nationale du Québec, I just wanted to update the chart above. I first used it in this article, which discussed U.K. inflation. The point is that VAT changes can have a very large one-shot effect on inflation, and at an order of magnitude similar to the effect of currency changes.

Book Review - Taxation: A Very Short Introduction

The book Taxation: AVery Short Introduction by Stephen Smith provides an introduction to mainstream analysis of taxes. It offers an excellent overview of the history of taxation, the forms of taxation, and current issues. The weakness of the analysis is that it is firmly conventional, and ignores the insights of functional finance (described in this primer). The book focusses on minimising the distortions created by taxation, while in fact those distortions are the necessary objective of taxation.

Book Review: Capital In The Twenty-First Century

The book “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” by the Parisian academic Thomas Piketty (published in English March 10, 2014) has already made considerable waves, reigniting the debate around income and wealth inequality. I believe that the book is interesting, and is aimed at reaching a wide audience. However, the process of eliminating technical details makes the analysis less satisfying. The book offers considerable data about the evolution of inequality. However the explanation of why inequality has risen, and his proposed solutions for inequality are less convincing as a result of the simplifications made.

Understanding Personal Taxes – Historical Evolution

Taxation is a very fundamental topic for economics and finance. Taxation policy represents one half of fiscal policy, and it drives how portfolios should be constructed, and how assets are priced. I will be writing a few articles on different issues raised by taxation over the coming weeks. I am starting with an overview of how tax policy has evolved over time, which explains their current structure. Tax rules are different in every country, and so I cannot really discuss the topic in depth for my international reading audience. I will instead start with some general observations about the basic principles of tax policy that I believe hold for many of the major developed economies.