Another Push for Global Taxation from the United Nations

Townhall.com ^ | September 30, | Daniel J. Mitchell

[Kaslin]

I spoke at the United Nations back in May, explaining that more government was the wrong way to help the global economy.

But I guess I’m not very persuasive. The bureaucrats have just released a new report entitled, “In Search of New Development Finance.”

As you can probably guess, what they’re really searching for is more money for global redistribution.

But here’s the most worrisome part of their proposal. They want the U.N. to be in charge of collecting the taxes, sort of a permanent international bureaucracy entitlement.

I’ve written before about the U.N.’s desire for tax authority (on more than one occasion), but this new report is noteworthy for the size and scope of taxes that have been proposed.

Here’s the wish list of potential global taxes, pulled from page vi of the preface.

Here’s some of what the report had to say about a few of the various tax options. We’ll start with the carbon tax, which I recently explained was a bad idea if imposed inside the U.S. by politicians in Washington. It’s a horrible idea if imposed globally by the kleptocrats at the United Nations.

…a tax of $25 per ton of CO2 emitted by developed countries is expected to raise $250 billion per year in global tax revenues. Such a tax would be in addition to taxes already imposed at the national level, as many Governments (of developing as well as developed countries) already tax carbon emissions, in some cases explicitly, and in other cases, indirectly through taxes on specific fuels.

Notice that the tax would apply only to “developed countries,” so this scheme is best characterized as discriminatory taxation. If Obama is genuinely worried about jobs being “outsourced” to nations such as China (as he implies in his recent attack on Romney), then he should announce his strong opposition to this potential tax.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Next, here’s what the U.N. says about a financial transactions tax.

A small tax of half a “basis point” (0.005 per cent) on all trading in the four major currencies (the dollar, euro, yen and pound sterling) might yield an estimated $40 billion per year. …even a low tax rate would limit high-frequency trading to some extent. It would thus result in the earning of a “double dividend” by helping reduce currency volatility and raising revenue for development. While a higher rate would limit trading to a greater extent, this might be at the expense of revenue.

This is an issue that already has attracted my attention, and I also mentioned that it was a topic in my meeting with the E.U.’s Tax Commissioner.

But rather than reiterate some of my concerns about taxing financial consumers, I want to give a back-handed compliment the United Nations. The bureaucrats, by writing that “a higher rate…might be at the expense of revenue,” deserve credit for openly acknowledging the Laffer Curve.

By the way, this is an issue where both the United States and Canada have basically been on the right side, though the Obama Administration blows hot and cold on the topic.

Now let’s turn to the worst idea in the U.N. report. The clowns want to steal wealth from rich people. But even more remarkable, they want us to think this won’t have any negative economic impact.

…the least distorting, most fair and most efficient tax is a “lump sum” payment, such as a levy on the accumulated wealth of the world’s richest individuals (assuming the wealthy could not evade the tax). In particular, it is estimated that in early 2012, there were 1,226 individuals in the world worth $1 billion or more, 425 of whom lived in the United States, 90 in other countries of the Americas, 315 in the Asia-Pacific region, 310 in Europe and 86 in Africa and the Middle East. Together, they owned $4.6 trillion in assets, for an average of $3.75 billion in wealth per person.21 A 1 per cent tax on the wealth of these individuals would raise $46 billion in 2012.

I’ll be the first to admit that you can’t change people’s incentives to produce in the past. So if you steal wealth accumulated as the result of a lifetime of work, that kind of “lump sum” tax isn’t very “distorting.”

But here’s a news flash for the nitwits at the United Nations. Rich people aren’t stupid (or at least their financial advisers aren’t stupid). So you might be able to engage in a one-time act of plunder, but it is deliberate naiveté to think that this would be a successful long-run source of revenue.

For more information, I addressed wealth taxes in this post, and the argument I was making applies to a global wealth tax just as much as it applies to a national wealth tax.

Now let’s conclude with a very important warning. Some people doubtlessly will dismiss the U.N. report as a preposterous wish list. In part, they’re right. There is virtually no likelihood of these bad policies getting implemented at any point in the near future.

But the statists have been relentless in their push for global taxation, and I’m worried they eventually will find a way to impose the first global tax. And if you’ll forgive me for going overboard on metaphors, once the camel’s nose is under the tent, it’s just a matter of time before the floodgates open.

The greatest threat is the World Health Organization’s scheme for a global tobacco tax. I wrote about this issue back in May, and it seems my concerns were very warranted. The bureaucrats recently unveiled a proposal – to be discussed at a conference in South Korea in November – that would look at schemes to harmonize tobacco taxes and/or impose global taxes.

Here’s some of what the Washington Free Beacon wrote.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a global excise tax of up to 70 percent on cigarettes at an upcoming November conference, raising concerns among free market tax policy analysts about fiscal sovereignty and bureaucratic mission creep. In draft guidelines published this September, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control indicated it may put a cigarette tax on the table at its November conference in Seoul, Korea. …it is considering two proposals on cigarette taxes to present to member countries. The first would be an excise tax of up to 70 percent. …The second proposal is a tiered earmark on packs of cigarettes: 5 cents for high-income countries, 3 cents for middle-income countries, and 1 cent for low-income countries. WHO has estimated that such a tax in 43 selected high-/middle-/low-income countries would generate $5.46 billion in tax revenue. …Whichever option the WHO ends up backing, “they’re both two big, bad ideas,” said Daniel Mitchell, a senior tax policy fellow at the Cato Institute. …Critics also argue such a tax increase will not generate more revenue, but push more sales to the black market and counterfeit cigarette producers. “It’s already huge problem,” Mitchell said. “In many countries, a substantial share of cigarettes are black market or counterfeit. They put it in a Marlboro packet, but it’s not a Marlboro cigarette. Obviously it’s a big thing for organized crime.” …The other concern is mission creep. Tobacco, Mitchell says, is easy to vilify, making it an attractive beachhead from which to launch future vice tax initiatives.

It’s my final comment that has me most worried. The politicians and bureaucrats are going after tobacco because it’s low-hanging fruit. They may not even care that their schemes will boost organized crime and may not raise much revenue.

They’re more concerned about establishing a precedent that international bureaucracies can impose global taxes.

I wrote the other day about whether Americans should escape to Canada, Australia, Chile, or some other nation when the entitlement crisis causes a Greek-style fiscal collapse.

But if the statists get the power to impose global taxes, then what choice will we have?

[Tublecane]

This is the next logical step, and I’m surprised the big push hasn’t come yet. I guess they’re waiting for the exact right global meltdown. The international monetary order is set up perfectly to help them.

They shouldn’t wait too long, though. We’re getting poorer all the time, and the commies still have some fight in em.

[pops88]

The elites have to keep themselves in lobster, Kobe beef and booze. That’s what the IMF is all about.

[IMR 4350]

They did such a great job with the Oil for Food Program what could possibly go wrong?

I’m expecting a tax on FOOD exporting countries.

A certain percentage of the food produced by these countries will be collected as a tax by the UN and the food will then be distributed to the countries that have to import food.

[originalbuckeye]

Wasn’t Hillary’s! most recent speech about taxing ‘the rich’ in every country via the UN? Why is it that the meme is that Conservatives are the One World-ers?

[Paine in the Neck]

The biggest problem the Left has when they gain power is people voting with their feet. Producers leave and takers remain and they run out of OPM (other people’s money) fast. One World Government is the Left’s grand idea to solve this problem - remove any possibility to run from their ministrations.

[BenLurkin]

[Mouton]

I am waiting for the first guy with a blue helmut who shows up here to collect a UN Tax. The only thing left on the ground will be his socks.

[hadaclueonce]

Can anyone help me out here? What has the UN ever done that was a positive?

[Paine in the Neck]

I am waiting for the first guy with a blue helmut who shows up here to collect a UN Tax. The only thing left on the ground will be his socks.

The Solzhenitsyn Solution:

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” — Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

[SeminoleCounty]

Its time to end all Globalization, now. I do not wan to pay taxes to the Unpunished Nazis

[TArcher]

>>what the IMF is all about.

Eyes. Wide. Shut.

http://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Cover-up-Satanism-Murder-Nebraska/dp/0963215809

[SeminoleCounty]

Can anyone help me out here? What has the UN ever done that was a positive?

---

I believe a UN maintenance worker from Mozambique once properly replaced a light bulb in the office of the High Commissioner of Hating White European Folks. Outside of this, I am not sure

[pops88]

Good link. I’ll pass on the book though. I’m aware of the satanism, pedophilia, homosexuality, drug running, etc. that is what gets people into office even at the lowest levels.

[TArcher]

From the foreward:

CIA Director William Colby to author John DeCamp:  

"The best we might be able to do sometimes, is point out the truth and step aside.  That is where I think you are now.  For your own safety and survival, step aside"

 

 

OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES, AND OUR SACRED HONOR...

[molson209]

The UN should go back to what it was made for Peace Keeping and stop trying to start wars

[TArcher]

>>The UN should go back to what it was made for

Hmm.

 

Al Stewart Lyrics -- " League Of Notions "

I'm here sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe
Spread out in a hall of Versailles
And every single nationality and principality
have come for a piece of the pie

I'm sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe
And the lines and the borders are gone
We've got to do this jigsaw puzzle
It's an awful muddle
But somehow we've got to go on

Lawrence of Arabia is waiting in the wings
He's got some Arab sheikhs and kings
And we're in debt to them somehow
Lawrence of Arabia has got this perfect vision
Gonna sell him down the river
There's no time for him now

I think I'm gonna take a piece of Russia
And a Piece of Germany
And give them to Poland again
I'll put together Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
And hope that is how they'll remain

Then I'll take a bit of Turkey
Then a lot of Turkey
This is all quite a heady affair
There's Persia and Iraq to pick up
And there's Churchill's hiccup
And we can't leave it up in the air

Woodrow Wilson waves his fourteen points around
And says "The time to act is now
Won't get this opportunity again"
Woodrow Wilson has his fourteen points
But Clemenceau turns to Lloyd George
And says "You know that
God himself had only ten"

Today I'm carried by a league of notions
(It's a league of notions)
By a league of notions
I don't think I quite understand
(I don't think I understand)
I only know from this commotion
(From this commotion)
There's a chance that we could turn
The world in the palm of our hands
(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)

Voices in the corridors of power
Candles burning hour by hour
Still you know that to the victors go the spoils
Such a great responsibility to make it fair
And there must be some reparations now
And don't forget the oil

Today I'm carried by a league of notions
(It's a league of notions)
By a league of notions
I don't think I quite understand
(I don't think I understand)
I only know from this commotion
(From this commotion)
There's a chance that we could turn
The world in the palm of our hands
(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)

Pax vobiscum
Wo-Oh, Pax vobiscum

http://www.lyricstime.com/al-stewart-league-of-notions-lyrics.html

Should it?  Or was what it was made for  Empyrrhicly compromised from the start?

[exPBRrat]

F that Christian hating organization.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I am waiting for the first guy with a blue helmut who shows up here to collect a UN Tax. The only thing left on the ground will be his socks.

That's not how it will happen. Your no-longer-representative government will collect it through the IRS, after either a treaty is implemented, or a dictatorial president signs an unratified treaty but tries to pretend it is law because it hasn't been rejected by Congress.

Like gun restrictions, this sort of a UN directive can only be implemented on stable, well-controlled populations. Try collecting taxes or weapons from warlords or citizens in the Middle East or Africa.