June 9, 2009 
Taxes can encourage people to make spending or investment decisions for tax reasons instead of economic reasons. Sometimes this is intentional. To illustrate, the excise tax on cigarettes is partly intended to discourage smoking, and it does have that effect. But many taxes have unintended economic effects. For example, while income from an employer is subject to income tax, most employer healthcare benefits are not. This may encourage employers to give raises in the form of healthcare benefits. One solution: tax employer healthcare benefits. I’m not a big fan of taxes, but this is one that would make sense.
