Weekend papers were full of advertisements for summer reading and literary columnists joined in the fray by compiling their lists of "must reads" for the beach and cottage hammock set.

These lists abound with classic fiction and light humor but they lack solid tomes for politicians. And given, Paul Martin's recent comments on the need to bring our taxes down "as quickly as we possibly can", we add to this momentum with our own "must read" list on the subject of taxes.

We will dispense with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (although this might be new for some of Mr. Martin's colleagues) and we have not included either of the Liberal Red Books. To force any Liberal to see how many 1993 and 1997 election promises have been broken or remain unfulfilled would be cruel. And we haven't included the Income Tax Act as mandatory reading. If we did, there would be no time to read anything else.

The Classics:
The Report of the 1966 Carter Royal Commission on Taxation. Its recommendations, such as classifying families as taxable units, are as sound today as they were 33 years ago.

The 1997 and 1998 Pre-Budget Consultation Reports from the House of Commons Finance Committee. Both documents make major recommendations for tax relief and the 1998 version catalogues 28 unfulfilled recommendations that were carried over from 1997.

Report of the Technical Committee on Business Taxation. Released in December 1997, this 240 page report (commonly referred to as the Mintz Report, named for its principal author) is seen as the bible by business tax reform advocates. Respect experts dissected our taxation system and its perverse and unintended effects on business. (Memo to Minister Martin: Watch out for two years worth of dust buildup as you pull this one off your top shelf.)

Policy Options, V. 10, N. 10, 1998, "Which Taxes To Cut." This "evening read" publication was put out by the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy and contained 11 separate papers pointing to different options for tax cuts. Special attention should be paid to Jonathan Kesselman's "Tax cuts for growth and fairness" and copious notes should be taken when reading James Davies "Reform the personal income tax."

Current Titles:
Tax Facts 11, published by the Fraser Institute. This nifty little book documents the growth of the Canadian tax burden over the past 38 years. It shows who pays what and how we stack up against our neighbours. It is a must read for anyone aspiring to be responsible for the raising and expenditure of public funds.

And for those short haul plane trips, two recent efforts by the C.D. Howe institute merit close scrutiny. To start, A Calculated Risk: Federal Tax Cuts in an Uncertain World, is taken from a speech by C.D. Howe's Bill Robson to the AGM of the Canadian Economics Association. Robson found that "annual tax cuts slightly over $4 billion yield a 90% probability of consistently running a surplus greater than $3 billion. And annual tax cuts of almost $6 billion yield a 90% probability of consistently lowering the debt-to-GDP ratio."

As part of an ongoing series on tax reform, the latest C.D. Howe effort is entitled Mixing it Up, Directions for Federal Tax Reform. This paper argues that "- the upcoming round of reform should focus on bringing down overall tax rates - and that Ottawa should pay more attention to payroll tax design."

A variety of other worthy titles exist but plowing through this list would be time well spent. Now has anyone seen my sunscreen and my dog-eared copy of Tax Facts 11