CFP on Global Taxation

The Journal of Applied Philosophy has a call for papers for a special issue on global taxation that is due to be co-edited by three important writers in the area of global justice. They are Thomas Pogge, Tom Campbell and Gillian Brock, the last of whom I also reported had a special issue of Global Justice devoted to her textbook on the same topic. The call for papers is reproduced below:


Concerns over climate change, global recessions, financial volatility, 
health deficits in poor countries, world poverty, and economic injustice 
have all resulted in global taxation policy proposals.  These include 
proposals of carbon taxes, currency transaction taxes, air-ticket taxes, 
and of reforms governing tax havens and disclosure requirements.  Such 
initiatives are currently enjoying serious analysis, attention and, in 
some cases, implementation success.  

While issues concerning national taxation have long concerned 
philosophers — invoking core questions about the legitimacy of governments 
and their appropriate functions and about the nature of freedom, coercion, 
and property rights — the issue of global taxation has not received 
anything like the same attention. Through a special issue of this journal, 
we aim to remedy such neglect.    

Some of the questions that the issue may address include:   

1)       What moral justifications can be offered for global taxation?   

2)       Who should be taxed?  Should some individuals or countries be 
exempt?  Should there be global taxes on businesses and multinational 
corporations?   

3)       What should be taxed? What arguments favour taxing consumption, 
wealth, income, speculation, trade, sales, natural resources, or a host of 
other potential tax bases?   

4)       It seems important to ensure that governance arrangements 
concerning taxation (including matters of collection, disbursement of 
revenue, and other decision-making) be accountable.  Is there a special 
problem of accountability at the global level?   

5)       What entity(ies) should implement or enforce global taxation 
policies?  If these are to be transnational entities, what would be the 
source of legitimate authority for them to do so?  Would this authority 
conflict with state sovereignty?   

6)       How (if at all) do implementation or feasibility issues affect 
the desirability of various tax proposals?   

7)       Do arguments about global taxation shed light on some of the core 
concerns in political philosophy, such as the nature of property rights, 
freedom, coercion, interpersonal obligations, the legitimacy of authority, 
or appropriate governance of collective affairs?   

We especially welcome papers that move discussion of global taxation 
topics in new directions.   

The guest co-editors of the proposed volume will be Gillian Brock 
(Auckland), Tom Campbell (CAPPE, Australia), and Thomas Pogge (Yale). 

The Journal now invites submissions of papers for this special issue. 
Submissions should be sent as an email attachment to jap@hull.ac.uk in a 
form suitable for blind review.  The maximum length of submissions to the 
Journal is 8000 words.  Please mark the email subject heading: ‘For Global 
Taxation Special issue’. 

The deadline for submissions for this special issue is 15 January 2013. 

Any queries about the proposed special issue can be directed to Gillian 
Brock: g.brock@auckland.ac.nz   

Global Tax Call for Papers

The Journal of Applied Philosophy has put out a call for papers with regard to a special issue on Global Tax. The call is reproduced here:


For a proposed special issue of the Journal of Applied Philosophy

Concerns over climate change, global recessions, financial volatility, 
health deficits in poor countries, world poverty, and economic injustice 
have all resulted in global taxation policy proposals.  These include 
proposals of carbon taxes, currency transaction taxes, air-ticket taxes, 
and of reforms governing tax havens and disclosure requirements.  Such 
initiatives are currently enjoying serious analysis, attention and, in 
some cases, implementation success.  While issues concerning national 
taxation have long concerned philosophers — invoking core questions about 
the legitimacy of governments and their appropriate functions and about 
the nature of freedom, coercion, and property rights — the issue of global 
taxation has not received anything like the same attention. Through a 
special issue of this journal, we aim to remedy such neglect. 


Some of the questions that the issue may address include:


1) What moral justifications can be offered for global taxation?


2) Who should be taxed?  Should some individuals or countries be exempt?  
Should there be global taxes on businesses and multinational corporations?


3) What should be taxed? What arguments favour taxing consumption, wealth, 
income, speculation, trade, sales, natural resources, or a host of other 
potential tax bases?


4) It seems important to ensure that governance arrangements concerning 
taxation (including matters of collection, disbursement of revenue, and 
other decision-making) be accountable.  Is there a special problem of 
accountability at the global level?


5) What entity(ies) should implement or enforce global taxation policies?  
If these are to be transnational entities, what would be the source of 
legitimate authority for them to do so?  Would this authority conflict 
with state sovereignty?


6) How (if at all) do implementation or feasibility issues affect the 
desirability of various tax proposals?


7) Do arguments about global taxation shed light on some of the core 
concerns in political philosophy, such as the nature of property rights, 
freedom, coercion, interpersonal obligations, the legitimacy of authority, 
or appropriate governance of collective affairs?


We especially welcome papers that move discussion of global taxation 
topics in new directions.


The guest co-editors of the proposed volume will be Gillian Brock 
(Auckland), Tom Campbell (CAPPE, Australia), and Thomas Pogge (Yale).

The Journal now invites submissions of papers for this special issue. 
Submissions should be sent as an email attachment to jap@hull.ac.uk in a 
form suitable for blind review.  The maximum length of submissions to the 
Journal is 8000 words.  Please mark the email subject heading: ‘For Global 
Taxation Special issue’. The deadline for submissions for this special 
issue is 15 January 2013.

Any queries about the proposed special issue can be directed to Gillian 
Brock: g.brock@auckland.ac.nz

Related articles

• EU to Propose Carbon Tax on Fuels (online.wsj.com)

Global Taxes

A question that has recently emerged from somewhat surprising quarters is the possibility of global taxes. The current leader of the German SPD floated the notion of a global finance tax recently, in the wake of similar ruminations by Lord Adair Turner, current head of the Financial Services Authority in the UK. These discussions have acquired a new relevance in the wake of the financial difficulties of the last 12 months, difficulties arguably brought about by the wave of financial deregulation that took off globally from the mid-1980s.

The feasibility of global finance taxes has been much debated since the floating of the idea  in 1972 by Nobel Laureate James Tobin. The other major area in which global taxes are recurrently proposed concern carbon emissions with suggestions for a carbon tax, a notion that appears to be attracting renewed attention in the EU. Both the notion of a global finance tax and the idea of a global carbon tax have the quality of being "Pigovian taxes", named such after the economist A.C. Pigou, meaning that they are intended to create disincentives for certain kinds of behaviour. The rationale for them is that certain activities have costs that are greater than the prices levied on them by markets.

Not all the forms of global tax proposed have this "Pigovian" bent since some, by contrast, are aimed at affirming certain ends rather than trying to limit activities. One form of such an affirmative global tax measure is Thomas Pogge's notion of a Global Resource Dividend intended to ensure that wealthy nations come together to collect means to alleviate poverty in the developing world. The details of Pogge's proposal and the problems alleged with it have been subjects dealt with at some length in a number of places but the basic conception of the Dividend has been widely influential.

Despite the widespread nature of the campaigns for global taxes there are some curious features of the discussion of the taxes. Firstly, in the absence of a global taxation authority, it remains the case that the imposition, collection and distribution of any such proposed taxes will tend to remain at the national level (though a federal EU could in principle also act in this way). Second, the suggestion of such taxes is widely recognized to have implications concerning redistribution, not all of which are evidently benign. 

Thirdly, whilst one of Pogge's central arguments concerns the view that the poverty of many in the world today is a legacy of the activities of those in the wealthy countries this is, to say the least, arguable. Since poor governance in a developing country acts to forestall the countries growth independently of its relation to developed countries the promotion of means within the developing country to produce better internal governance has arguably more valence for its future development than would receipt of donations from developed countries. Fourthly, the imposition of global taxes in the absence of a central global authority ensures that the taxes in question are imposed on a group of citizens by their public authority for the benefit of some beyond the remit of that authority. To put that another way, citizens are taxed for the exclusive benefit of non-citizens, something not clearly part of the social contract.

The curious features of these taxes apply less to carbon taxes given the evident global effect of environmental policies and the detrimental effect on all of the pursuit of poor policy in these areas. Even here the question of redistribution raises some difficult questions since many poorer countries will have worse environmental records. So the arguments for global taxes have to be assessed as at present unproven though the activism in favour of them indicates a growing awareness of a need for an expansive sense of cosmopolitan right, a notion that has been signally important in Neo-Kantian IR theory as will be discussed in more detail in later postings.