Free Republic

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the radical leftist President of Brazil currently hosting the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, will tell attendees Monday the time has come for a global taxation impost on ultra wealthy individuals. At a July meeting of G20 finance ministers in Rio, the world’s wealthiest nations agreed to start a “dialogue on fair and progressive taxation, including of ultra-high-net-worth individuals,” despite fierce resistance from the United States and Germany. Now Lula says the time has come for action as he hopes to move the wealth tax plan forward as the money raised from billionaires will...

A closed-door meeting of left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was held on January 16, 2003, in Washington, D.C. to consider how to apply international financial pressure through a global tax on the U.S. Bruno Jetin, a representative of ATTAC France, spoke to the gathering and acknowledged in private conversation that his group works hand-in-glove with the French Communist Party and the "Socialist parties on the Left." A representative of the embassy of France in the U.S. was listed as a participant. ATTAC stands for the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens. The International ATTAC Movement...

Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency. “They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot...

The United Nations says it can end poverty, stop global warming, and end the threat of contagious disease while also unlocking $7 trillion of hidden wealth from developing nations in the process. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. In a new book launched with great fanfare at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) claims to offer “innovative financial mechanisms that could dramatically reduce the cost of managing global risks can now be implemented by governments across the world.”...

France’s experiment with the Tobin Tax has proved a spectacular flop. Its finance ministry admits that the scattershot levy on financial transactions has raised just a third of the money expected since August. Total takings will be a paltry €800 million ($1.04 billion) in 2013, but that overlooks the much greater damage inflicted on French finance, industry and the government’s own tax base. “France is shooting itself in the foot,” said Paul-Henri de La Porte du Theil, head of French finance industry AFG. … The House of Lords EU Committee says the Tobin Tax will have “far-reaching adverse consequences” for...

IMF paper warns of 'savings tax' and mass write-offs as West's debt hits 200-year high ... Debt burdens in developed nations have become extreme by any historical measure and will require a wave of haircuts, warns IMF paper. The paper said policy elites in the West are still clinging to the illusion that rich countries can chip away at their debts with a blend of austerity cuts and growth. – UK Telegraph Dominant Social Theme: The West is out of control and only taxes can save it. Free-Market Analysis: The UK Telegraph has discovered that the IMF wants to inflict...

Radical leftist president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used his opening speech to the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday to condemn the government of Israel for allegedly seeking “revenge” against Hamas terrorists and to defend widespread censorship of conservatives. Brazil opens the speeches at the General Assembly every year, a tradition that began in 1955 when Brazil’s leaders offered speak first as other countries hesitated. Lula began his speech, the second since he took office for a third term in January 2023, by making special mention of the Palestinian delegation and welcoming the presence of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud...

The startup electric car company Fisker said this week that it is halting the production of its vehicles to raise $150 million in emergency funds as it grapples with a cash crunch spurred by a low demand for electric vehicles. The California-based company, which says its mission is to “create the world’s most emotional and sustainable electric vehicles,” has barely produced over a thousand electric vehicles worldwide for the year. “The company has approximately 4,700 vehicles in its currently inventory, carried over from 2023 and including 2024 production,” the company said. “While it has not completed an NRV analysis for...

Occidental Petroleum quietly sold off a carbon capture facility – the world’s largest — that was built into a natural gas processing plant in Texas, according to a Bloomberg Green investigation. The plant, called Century, never operated at more than a third of its capacity since it was built in 2010. According to statements the company made to Bloomberg Green, the technology worked, and the facility continues to operate as designed. The economics of Century weren’t good because of limited amounts of natural gas coming from a nearby field, according to the report, and as a result, the plant fell...

I had not heard this. And what I am hearing is pretty disturbing as, unsurprisingly, it completely screws American businesses. It takes the concepts of globalism and equity, then combines them while surrendering our sovereignty over our own tax revenues. Basically giving it away.Does that sound about right? The quiet new way @JoeBiden & @TheDemocrats wants to tax you. @OECD surrenders America’s sovereignty over our tax code and allows foreign countries to take our taxes that were meant for our own essential programs and military. https://t.co/7H2rYl6iB0— Topper in NC (@LieselGreer) July 22, 2023Horrifically enough, it is.Over the past two years,...

@disclosetv NEW - Globalist Macron calls for a new "international taxation" on top of current taxes to finance "climate efforts."

@JStein_WaPo Scoop: White House weighs declaring national climate emergency as soon as this week, per sources, as collapse of talks w/ Manchin leads admin to explore raft of unilateral options

The Biden administration’s international tax agenda suffered a setback when Sen. Manchin rejected a 15% minimum tax on multinational companies this past week, dimming prospects of turning last year’s global tax agreement into reality. Biden administration officials had planned to use Democratic fiscal legislation to enact the U.S. piece of the deal struck last year by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and more than 130 other countries. They wanted quick action to set a 15% minimum tax on U.S.-based multinational companies in each country where they operate, a move aimed at showing international leadership and prodding other countries to follow suit....

The White House said Americans should pay higher taxes to ensure a rapid green transition away from fossil fuels in a report on President Joe Biden’s economic record. The federal government can encourage such a shift through carbon taxes or a cap and trade system forcing an emissions limit on companies, said the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) report released last week. The White House added that consumers would continue purchasing “artificially inexpensive, carbon-intensive goods” without proper government policies in place. A “cap and trade” system creates a limit for how much greenhouse gas companies can emit. If a company...

Finance ministers from the G7 group of leading economies are confident of striking a deal on taxing multinational companies at their meeting in London. The agreement is expected to include a global minimum rate of corporation tax. It would target tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft. German finance minister Olaf Scholz said the deal would "change the world". He said a 15% rate would help pay back debts that have built up during the pandemic - and that he was "absolutely confident" there would be an agreement. "If we agree on the minimum taxation for corporates, this will help...

The U.S. is asking other countries to agree to a 15% global minimum corporate tax, as part of international efforts to dissuade companies from seeking lower taxes outside of their home nations, Bloomberg News reported. “A global corporate minimum tax rate would ensure the global economy thrives based on a more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations,” the Treasury Department tweeted.

A high-level U.N. panel .. made a series of sweeping recommendations aimed at reforming the global financial system, which includes the implementation of an international corporate tax rate. The High-Level Panel for International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI) said a 20% to 30% global corporate tax on profits would “help limit incentives against profit shifting, tax competition and a race to the bottom.” The panel recommends the creation of a body that collects and disseminates data about corporate profits, where the assets of multinational corporations are located, as well as which entities own them,...

Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is about to call for a minimum corporate tax rate which, in effect, would prevent American companies from relocating offshore to escape the forthcoming tax hikes, according to reports. Axios reported that "by trying to convince other countries to impose a global minimum tax, Yellen is acknowledging the risks to the American economy if it acts alone in raising corporate rates."

"On why the free market won’t develop new forms of energy fast enough: ...Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch."

The GOP accepts the notion of climate change - but not the way Democrats wanted them to.Senate Republicans head-faked Democrats on climate change Wednesday, agreeing in a floor vote that the planet’s climate was changing, but blocking language that would have blamed human activity. In a complicated maneuver that was the first politically perilous test for Senate Republicans, the new majority party split up the votes that Democrats had hoped would force the GOP into an awkward roll call on whether they believed in the science behind climate change — just hours after President Barack Obama slammed Republicans in his...