"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing," said Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV. Political leaders aiming to minimize the hissing of powerful political interests thus often shape tax policy based on political expediency and incrementalism. Eccleston (government, U. of Tasmania, Australia) analyzes the exceptions to this rule, seeking to understand the political circumstances under which fundamental tax policy change happens in Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United States by providing a policy history of the consumption tax reform debate in those four advanced industrial economies. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)