New Europe, New Ideas

The Adam Smith Institute is reporting on the growing trend of flat taxes in Central and Eastern Europe.

Companies and individuals in Romania now pay a single tax rate of just 16 percent. But it's just the latest of a long list - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia - to adopt the Flat Tax idea. Opposition parties want the same in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Simple tax systems distort the economy less and increase collection rates, a big problem in some of these countries. Let’s hope a major Western European country jumps on the bandwagon soon and makes the bandwagon unstoppable.