Tom Giovanetti

The Institute for Policy Innovation also took Apple's side. "It's a sad state of affairs when Americans have to rely on private companies to protect our constitutional rights against the government, but apparently that's where we are," said President Tom Giovanetti in a Thursday blog post. "That's why I commend Tim Cook of Apple for his strong statement opposing the FBI's overly broad demand for the creation of a tool that would allow them to break encryption on any iPhone in the world," Giovanetti said of the Apple CEO.

The law enforcement function is vital to a safe and secure society, but keeping law enforcement within constitutional limits is vital to a free society. We can have both.

Congress has voted to permanently bar state and local governments from taxing access to the Internet. For 17 years, the ban on Internet taxes has benefited millions of Americans by empowering them to conduct transactions on the Internet free from the fear of additional tax burdens. "This is a tremendous victory for America's Internet economy, and for all of us who participate in this economy", said Institute for Policy Innovation president Tom Giovanetti.

Passage of PITFA as part of HR-644 now "intensifies" S-698 opponents' push to "stave off the attempt" to pass that bill, said IPI president Tom Giovanetti in a statement. S-698 "has never had committee scrutiny on the Senate side and [has] never been subject to amendment on the floor." Senate Republican leaders "must commit to first submitting this legislation to the same procedures, hearings and scrutiny appropriate to any and all legislation, especially since this proposal has serious Constitutional questions," Giovanetti said.

Fans of the just-passed permanent Internet Tax Fairness Act (PITFA), which bans taxes on Internet servcie, were weighing in Thursday (Feb. 11), including warning about the Internet sale tax legislation whose future consideration was a tradeoff for that passage.

Washington must ensure that spectrum is being freed-up and made available for use on a regular basis in order to keep the critical wireless economy going and growing. But we’re reaching the point where the largest, most inefficient holder of spectrum is in fact the federal government.

Tom Giovanetti, president of the freedom-oriented IPI, recently wrote “Now that Texas Republican Kevin Brady chairs the Ways & Means Committee, he will have more to say about the details of any eventual tax reform than will the future president. So what really matters is Brady’s priorities…and they are encouraging”.

Most of the major presidential candidates have released tax reform plans with enough specifics to run them through an economic model. On tax policy, Republicans tend to focus on economic growth, while Democrats tend to focus on distributional effects.

In current practice, the owner of the forfeited property does not have to be convicted or even charged with a crime for property to be taken and kept by the government. It is as if the property itself is guilty, rather than its owner. And it only gets worse from there.

The corporate tax is actually a hidden tax on employees, shareholders and consumers. When we raise taxes on corporations, they simply pass the tax along in the form of lower wages, lower dividends, and higher prices.