A back-of-envelope evaluation of national tax rates and freedom levels

Reuters cited CEI’s expert on tax rates & political systems

Richard Morrison, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute: “Low-freedom countries may have low taxes because that’s what allows the governing class to buy the allegiance/acquiescence of a populace that didn’t actually choose to elect them.”
A population’s homogeneity and social trust could also play a role, Morrison said, “because of willingness to cooperate with strangers via commercial relationships – and greater willingness to shoulder higher shared tax burdens. Nordic countries famously score especially high on international comparisons of social trust, and that factor could explain a lot about the correlation researchers have noted.”

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