Tax Reform Focus of Baker Conference

CONTACT: Dana Durbin

PHONE: (713)
831-4797

E-MAIL:
ddurbin@rice.edu

TAX REFORM FOCUS OF BAKER INSTITUTE ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Issues confronting proponents of
federal tax law reform will be the focus of the fourth annual conference of
Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in early
November.

“Tax Reform for the Millennium,” the title of the two-day
conference scheduled for Nov. 5 and 6 in Baker Hall on the Rice campus, will
explore a wide variety of issues associated with fundamental reform in the tax
system in the United States.

Tax reform proposals that will be discussed include the
national retail sales tax, the flat tax and the value-added tax, according to
Peter Mieszkowski, Rice’s Cline Professor of Economics. Mieszkowski and Rice’s
Economics Department Chair George Zodrow are the academic organizers of the
conference.

Conference participants will examine a host of issues related
to tax policy reforms, including their economic impacts, international effects,
transitional problems, distributional effects, administrative and compliance
costs and political implications.

“This is not a conference to promote tax reform,” Mieszkowski
said. “Our object is to have a debate and discuss in some depth the issues
raised by tax policy reform.”

Participants are proponents of reform, including U.S. Rep. Bill
Archer of Houston, as well as those who are skeptical of the benefits of tax
reform, Mieszkowski said.

Archer, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, will speak
at 10:30 a.m. Nov. 5. Then at 11:15 a.m. a panel will address “Politics and
Economics of Tax Reform: The View From Congress.” Participants will include
Archer; Robert Hall of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, one of the
creators of the flat tax proposal; Michael Graetz, who is a leading tax scholar
from the Yale University law school and a former treasury official; Jane
Gravelle, a well-known tax researcher at the Congressional Research Service; and
John Karl Scholz, who is currently at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Economics and recently left the U.S. Department of the
Treasury

Leonard Burman, deputy assistant secretary for tax policy with
the Treasury Department, will speak at 2 p.m. Nov. 5. Following his remarks will
be a panel discussion, “Politics and Economics of Tax Reform: The View From the
Treasury.”

On the conference’s second day, Nov. 6, participants will
present papers relating to their areas of expertise. It is expected that the
papers will be published in a Baker Institute conference volume, which could
become a prominent source of information on the critical issues raised by
consumption tax reforms.

The day will be broken into two sessions. Zodrow will moderate
the first session, scheduled from 8:15 a.m. to noon. Rice President Malcolm
Gillis, who is the Kenneth Zingler Professor of Economics at Rice and for many
years focused his research and teaching activities in part on national and
international economic reform, will introduce this session.

Participants during this first session and the issues on which
they will present papers include: Dale Jorgenson, Harvard University Department
of Economics, behavioral responses and implications; Jane Gravelle,
Congressional Research Service, U.S. Library of Congress, behavioral responses
and implications; Charles Ballard, Michigan State University Department of
Economics, international issues; and Glenn Hubbard, Columbia University School
of Business, capital taxation. The session will conclude with a panel discussion
and a question and answer period.

The second session, from 1:30 to 5 p.m. will be moderated by
Mieszkowski. Participants and the papers they will present include Zodrow,
transitional issues; Mieszkowski, distributional concerns; William Gale, the
Brookings Institute, administration and compliance; Sijbren Cnossen, Erasmus
Universiteit Rotterdam, European perspective; and Joe Barnes, Rice University
Baker Institute, political aspects. This session will also conclude with a panel
discussion and question and answer period.

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