Congress' excess burden of taxation.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

A well-established principle of public finance holds that taxes impose costs on society beyond the amount of revenue government collects. Estimates vary depending on the type of tax, but the "marginal excess burden" of Federal taxes most likely ranges from 14 to 52 cents per dollar of tax revenue, averaging about 44 cents for all Federal taxes, according to scholar Christopher J. Conover with the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research, in a policy analysis for the Cato Institute, Washington, D.C.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provides a useful illustralion. The Congressional Budget Office has projected the 10-year, on-budget cost of the law will be just over one trillion dollars. However, the PPACA will impose an additional hidden cost of $157,000,000,000 to $494,000,000,000 in the form of reduced economic output Related provisions (such as the socalled "doc fix") could drive the economic losses to $550,000,000,000--or more than half of the bill's official...