Talks last Friday at St. Francis University

Last Friday I was at St. Francis University in Pennsylvania, giving a couple of talks to students and faculty.  The first was a small session in which I discussed corporate inversions and also touched on the EU state aid cases.  My audience was not lawyers or tax people, so I had to start from the most basic foundational issues and work my way up (or down).  I rather enjoy doing this, however, and felt that it worked well.  (One has to start with: What might be the reasons for having an income tax?  And then what happens when you can't reach corporate income unless you impose the tax at the entity level?  And then what happens when you have international considerations?)

In the evening, I gave a talk to a larger audience, entitled "When, Why, and How Do Deficits Matter?" Here is a pdf version of my slides. The first two-thirds discuss how I think one should approach the issues conceptually, while the last third offers a quick tour through some pertinent charts from recent reports by the Congressional Budget Office.