Joseph Coletti

State governments can take a number of steps to help businesses start and expand. A new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts provides examples from across the country of how regulators have used online permitting portals to make applying for permits easier and faster, prioritized enforcement against frequent violators of regulations,…

While North Carolina retailers scramble to understand how to comply with new sales tax collection burdens from multiple states and localities, the state Department of Revenue (NCDOR) joined the sales tax rush with an August 7 directive. The Tax Foundation says North Carolina is one of thirteen states…

We have often made the case for government transparency and measurement to improve government performance and outcomes. Consultants Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene provide examples of how bad incentives and bad motives can lead to bad reporting of numbers. Altering scores: The infamous example of 11 Atlanta teachers who were…

We have a love-hate relationship with philanthropy, which starts with questions of fairness and has been magnified for the past hundred years by the income tax. One manifestation is the continuing debate over donor-advised funds from community foundations and Donors Trust to the National Christian Foundation and…

David Neumark, director of the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine, proposes taxpayers directly fund half of any minimum wage increase with a high-wage tax credit (HWTC).  He offers three advantages of his proposal in today’s Wall Street Journal: First, by offsetting part…

If we ask government to do less, it will naturally shrink. I keep returning to this basic idea of Richard Cornuelle, who dedicated the bulk of his life to spurring private, non-market-based competition with government. The John Locke Foundation’s mission is to “transform government through competition…[and establish] a better balance…

Deregulation offers a better, lower-cost way to expand access to out-of-home childcare than larger federal government subsidies, Ryan Bourne explains at Governing online. Easing regulations would address the underlying question: “Why is child care so expensive?” Staff-child ratio rules and worker-qualification requirements, in particular, increase prices and reduce availability,…

Amazon’s recent announcement of a distribution center in Garner is one of thirteen so far this year, with more likely to be announced in the coming weeks and months ahead, joining locations in Alabama, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Washington. Incentive offers have differed from place to place, which suggests the…