What are the issues with Global Taxation?

hilda: What are the issues with Global Taxation?
What are the issues with Global Taxation, like what form would a tax take and how would it be administered?
Also, what is your opinion on the idea of Global Taxation?

Answers and Views:

Answer by SDD
You know, we just don’t have enough taxes yet. In the US, federal, state and local spending is 45% of GDP. If we get government spending up even higher we can put the economy in the toilet permanently.

Answer by David
No taxation without representation.

Global taxation is a swell idea, but will only be workable when there is a consensus among nations on how to administer it, and who will be the beneficiaries of it.

I love the idea of a special tax on everyone, where wealth can effectively be re-distributed from those that have enough and more, to those living in abject poverty.

What form would such a tax take? It could be lots of things. The possibilities are endless. I can’t conceive of one that would be palatable for most people.

I think first we would need an international organization that is acceptable to all the stakeholders to decide how to spend/use the proceeds of a global tax. Do people even see such a thing as a possible solution to some global problem?

Politics on some levels is all about who pays taxes, and who the tax money gets transferred to and/or spent on. What kind of structure can we build that we’ll allow to collect and spend a global tax? Something like the UN, only effective. Something where the ones being taxed are willing to consent to it because they see it as fair, and the application of the money as being worthwhile.

Maybe starting small. Not global, but still super-national. The EU is partway there. We have some international economic structures in place, is there something to be built on there? OECD?

An interesting and worthwhile question. Sorry I don’t have an answer.

P.S. There will be no keeping the trolls happy. Some people oppose taxation, and really don’t give a rat’s tail about people starving in their own back yard, let alone the other side of the world.