The ultimate goal is clear: through incremental steps, to create uniform global tax standards and rules to allow governments to track and tax every penny we earn, spend or save. This should be comforting news, for if there’s one thing we’ve learnt in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, it is that banks and governments can always be trusted to look after the people’s money.
Indeed, according to Turkey’s finance minister Mehmet Şimşek, global tax authorities should be given even more power:"The mark of the beast."
The G-20 has launched efforts to encourage all jurisdictions to sign the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance in Tax Matters, developed jointly by the Council of Europe and the OECD. But more must be done to combat the informal economy. I can easily imagine bilateral agreements – and then a multilateral agreement – that establishes a unique global tax ID for all taxpayers.A tax ID for each and every global citizen! That way we can be taxed wherever we are. Registration will no doubt be quick and painless, and once you’re in the system, escape will be next to impossible – a little like trying to leave the euro zone. And the ultimate target, as Şimşek is not shy to admit, is the informal economy.
Wolf Street
New Global Taxman to Wage War on Informal Economy
Don Quijones
1 comment:
Tax-ids first morph into "registration" which then becomes license. The first is the government taking a piece of what you produce. The second implies the government not only taxes but regulates. The last implies, tax, regulation and no longer a right, but granting privilege.
In Texas up until a couple years ago we had tax tabs for vehicles instead of license plates or registration schemes. We'd go to the tax collectors office, pay the tax and get a tax id plate. They cost $30.
Then we had to register our vehicles. That was ~$50 or 60.
Now we have a department of motor vehicles that licenses vehicles. and we pay $70 or 80.
It's difficult to maintain a libertarian state because all the millions of immigrants that flee dysfunctional government in Mexico, California, Michigan, Illinois, Mass., El Salvador and elsewhere to move here, want to bring their broken governments with them not realizing that the reason they want to move here is because we don't have the layers of bureaucracy that they are accustomed to. I think over time, as the dominant paradigm encroaches, all government everywhere must adhere to the same rules and standards because not following their laws implies a different value set, which is actually a threat to any paradigm.
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