The Associated Press reports from Havana on a new law intended to attract more foreign investment to Cuba: "The law would cut taxes on profits by about half, to 15 percent, and make companies exempt from paying taxes for the first eight years of operation."

So Castro's Communist Cuba is going to have lower taxes than America!

(Truth is, of course, that in the absence of a respect for private property rights built into a tradition and a rule of law, one can't really predict with any confidence what the tax rates will be in Cuba. The tax rates in Cuba will be whatever the Castros want them to be, and any company that invests against a promise of no taxes for eight years and then a 15 percent rate may find itself unpleasantly surprised when the rate increases.)

Thanks to those paying members and subscribers who have renewed their subscriptions in response to the reminder that went out this week. For the rest of you, here are answers to some Frequently Asked Questions:

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The mayor of Charlotte, N.C., Patrick Cannon, a Democrat, has reportedly resigned after being arrested for taking bribes from undercover FBI agents.

The entrapment elements of this case and of other similar cases are disturbing (as discussed at greater length in this earlier post here).

But aside from the entrapment point, what strikes me is how the corruption allegations make a case for smaller government. From an NPR/AP story about the case:

According to the complaint, FBI agents posing as commercial real estate developers paid Cannon on five separate occasions between January 2013 and February 2014. Cannon accepted cash in exchange for access to city officials responsible for planning, zoning and permitting.

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin appeared on Larry Kudlow's CNBC show last night and Kudlow asked him about my column that pointed out Governor Walker's latest income tax cut focused on the lowest bracket rather than the top marginal rate. Pretty neat. Here's a link to the video.

Renewal notices went out earlier today to those FutureOfCapitalism subscribers who are due for renewal this quarter. It's the only renewal notice we will send, so please keep an eye out for it. You can now pay with Bitcoin, too, if you prefer. And if you aren't yet a paying customer, please consider becoming one as a way of showing that you value the content here and want it to continue — the link is here.

Members of the Long Beach, California transit board report receiving calls from Vice President Gore before they voted on a contract to buy electric buses, the Long Beach Press Telegram reports. Gore-affiliated companies were investors in one of the companies competing for the contract.

New government rules will increase the number of medical billing codes to 68,000 from 14,000, creating additional complexity and expense for hospitals and health insurers, the Boston Globe reports.

Exactly how detailed are all these new medical descriptions?

Code W61.01XA: bitten by a parrot, initial encounter

Code V95.43: spacecraft collision injuring occupant.

Code V97.33XD: sucked into a jet engine, subsequent encounter...

Get ready for a paperwork meltdown at the medical office.

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Now for some good news.

Michael Mandelbaum's new book, The Road to Global Prosperity, points out something that may seem obvious but is nonetheless important and underappreciated. As he puts it:

No method of organizing economic life on the planet other than internationally integrated free markets commands anything like the political support necessary to displace the current system. No collection of rules, institutions, and practices that is new, different, and promising is available. The alternative to the current global economic order is…nothing.

That was the good news.

The book goes on to examine a range of potential threats to prosperity.Many of them are political.

The IRS has found and announced a bunch of new ways to tax Bitcoins, including subjecting Bitcoin mining activity to self-employment tax, subjecting wages paid in Bitcoins to income and payroll taxes, and subjecting gains on resales or exchanges of Bitcoins to capital gains tax.

Libertarian (or classical liberal) law professor Richard Epstein's column this week is about the Obama administration's proposed regulations effectively banning the sale or shipment across state lines of items containing any amount of ivory — even a used piano or a chess set:

One particular galling maneuver shows the Catch-22 nature of the proposed restrictions. As is commonly the case, the government requires individual owners to prove that any object that contains even a sliver of ivory comports with government regulations. The proposed regulations appear to require that a piano owner show, for example, that the ivory found in its keys, some of which may be replacements, came in through one of 13 ports that were licensed to receive goods made of ivory.

But these ports did not keep the needed records until 1982. Consequently, the needed proof will be available only in highly exceptional cases. The result is a de facto ban against resale.

The Republican Party is preparing to join the Democrats in singling out millionaires for special negative treatment by the government. That's the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun here and at Newsmax here.

David Fahrenthold has a fascinating story in the Washington Post about how the government processes civil service retirements on paper with filing cabinets in a cave:

During the past 30 years, administrations have spent more than $100 million trying to automate the old-fashioned process in the mine and make it run at the speed of computers.

They couldn't.

So now the mine continues to run at the speed of human fingers and feet. That failure imposes costs on federal retirees, who have to wait months for their full benefit checks. And it has imposed costs on the taxpayer: The Obama administration has now made the mine run faster, but mainly by paying for more fingers and feet.

Bloomberg News reports:

U.S. taxpayers claimed 60.4 percent more in capital gains in 2012 than 2011, locking in lower tax rates before the 2013 tax increase took effect, according to Internal Revenue Service data released today...During 2012, long-term capital gains and qualified dividends were subject to a top rate of 15 percent. Starting in 2013, the top rate was 23.8 percent, because of the expiration of some of President George W. Bush's tax cuts and an investment tax in President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law....The $498.7 billion in capital gains in 2012 were concentrated among the highest-earning households. U.S. taxpayers with more than $250,000 in adjusted gross income received 83 percent of the net capital gains.

The tax efficiencies in Berkshire Hathaway's "cash-rich split-off" with Graham Holdings are the subject of a Bloomberg News article. The article notes that while Mr. Buffett "has been vocal about tax policy," he also works a lot of angles to try to keep his own tax bill, and Berkshire Hathaway's, as low as legally possible.