Charles McLure

Monday October 18, 2004
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Room 180
Free and Open to all!
Lunch Served

Charles E. McLure, Jr.
Senior Fellow
Hoover Institution
Stanford University

Mr. McClure's presentation will address the following questions:

How would a rational sales tax be structured?
How would electronic commerce be taxed in a rational system?
How do state sales taxes depart from the rational model?
How is electronic commerce taxed?
How could sales taxes be rationalized?
What would this imply for taxation of electronic commerce?
What about arguments that electronic commerce should be exempt?
What has happened over the past few years?

NTA Project
Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce
Simplified Sales Tax Project (SSTP)
How much simplification would the SSTP produce?
What complexity would remain?
How is the European Union handling these issues?Suggested readings:

ìSSTP: Out of the Great Swamp, But Whither? A Plea to Rationalize the State Sales Tax,î State Tax Notes, Vol. 22, No. 14 (December 31, 2001), pp. 1077-85.

ìThe Taxation of Electronic Commerce: Background and Proposal,î in Nicholas Imparato, Public Policy and the Internet: Privacy, Taxes, and Contracts (Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution Press, 2000), pp. 49-113.

ìEU and US Sales Taxes in the Digital Age: A Comparative Analysis,î Bulletin for International Fiscal Documentation, Vol. 56, No. 4 (April 2002), pp. 135-145.

About the Speaker

Charles E. McLure, Jr. is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Prior to joining the Hoover Institution he was Vice President of the National Bureau of Economic Research (1977-81) and Cline Professor of economics at Rice University (1965-77).

As Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Analysis from 1983 to 1985, McLure was responsible for developing the Treasury Department's proposals to President Ronald Reagan that became the basis of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the most comprehensive reform of the income tax since its introduction in 1913. He was also Staff Director of the Working Group on Worldwide Unitary Taxation appointed by Treasury Secretary Donald Regan at Reagan's request. He received the Treasury Department’s Exceptional Service Award in 1985.

A specialist in the economics of taxation, McLure has written extensively on federal tax reform, intergovernmental fiscal relations, the value added tax and other forms of consumption-based taxation, relief from double taxation of corporate dividends, state corporate income taxes, taxation of natural resources, and taxation in developing countries. His current research focuses on taxation of electronic commerce and tax competition.

McLure has served as a Senior Economist on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, as a consultant to various agencies of the U.S. government, and an adviser to several international organizations, including the World Bank, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the InterAmerican Development Bank. The countries where he has been an adviser include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Russia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela. He was recently a member of the OECD’s Technical Advisory Group on taxation of Business Profits.

Books McLure has written include:

    Fiscal Transition in Kazakhstan (with Jorge Martinez and Sally Wallace, 1999);
The Taxation of Income from Business and Capital in Colombia (co-authored, 1990);
The Value Added Tax: Key to Deficit Reduction (1987);
Economic Perspectives on State Taxation of Multijurisdictional Corporations (1986); and
Must Corporate Income Be Taxed Twice? (1979).

McLure has edited:
State Corporation Income Tax: Issues in Worldwide Unitary Taxation,
Fiscal Federalism and the Taxation of Natural Resources (with Peter Mieszkowski)
Tax Assignment in Federal Countries, and
World Tax Reform (with Michael Boskin)

McLure has also published numerous articles in economic journals and law reviews.

A native of Van Horn, Texas, McLure resides with his wife Patsy in Los Altos, California. He degrees in economics from the University of Kansas (B.A., 1962) and Princeton (M.A., 1964; Ph.D., 1966). His favorite pastimes are spending time with his wife, telemark skiing, and backpacking