Abstract
Two of the most serious obstacles that plans for global taxation must overcome are: (1) that there is no existing cosmopolitan political community that can serve as the ethical basis for global distributive justice and (2) that many states have no strong interest that would lead them to support the creation of global taxes. I argue that it is possible for a system of global taxation to overcome these problems if a tax could provide a clear benefit to existing political communities and if it could offer some benefit to the states that would bear much of the tax burden. A tax discouraging the use of tax havens is the most promising ways of accomplishing this. This type of tax could be legitimized on the basis of existing national political identities, as it would strengthen these communities by discouraging the violation of national ethical obligations through tax avoidance. States would also have a strong incentive for imposing this type of tax, as limiting the use of tax havens would allow states to collect lost revenue.
- 1
Tax Justice Network. “The Price of Offshore Revisited: Press Release – 19th July 2012.” (2012) http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/The_Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_Presser_120722.pdf.
- 2
Robert Reic. Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life. (New York: Knopf, 2008); Rory McVeigh. “How Occupy Wall Street Works.” Foreign Affairs (October 10, 2011).
- 3
Michael Keen, Jon Strand. “Indirect Taxes on International Aviation.” Fiscal Studies 28, 1 (2007): 1–41.
- 4
Martin Walker. “Global Taxation: Paying for Peace.” World Policy Journal 10, 2 (1993): 7–12.
- 5
Paula Casal. “Progressive Environmental Taxation: A Defence.” Political Studies 60, 2 (2012): 419–433; Richard Cooper. “Toward a Real Global Warming Treaty: The Case for a Carbon Tax.” Foreign Affairs (March–April 1998): 66–79.
- 6
Thomas W. Pogge. “An Institutional Approach to Humanitarian Intervention.” Public Affairs Quarterly 6, 1 (1992): 89–103; Thomas W. Pogge. “An Egalitarian Law of Peoples.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 23, 3 (1994): 195–224.
- 7
Michael Brzoska. “Taxation of the Global Arms Trade? An Overview of the Issues.” Kyklos 57 (2004): 149–172.
- 8
Walker op. cit.
- 9
Pogge 1992, 1994 op. cit.
- 10
Walker op. cit.
- 11
Brzoska op. cit.
- 12
Walker op. cit.
- 13
Richard Cooper. “Toward a Real Global Warming Treaty: The Case for a Carbon Tax.” Foreign Affairs (March–April 1998): 66–79.
- 14
Gillian Brock. “Taxation and Global Justice: Closing the Gap between Theory and Practice.” Journal of Social Philosophy 39, 2 (2008): 161–184; Gillian Brock. “Reforming our Taxation Arrangements to Promote Global Gender Justice.” Philosophical Topics 37, 2 (2010): 141–160.
- 15
Myron J. Frankman. “International Taxation: The Trajectory of an Idea from Lorimer to Brandt.” World Development 24, 5 (1996): 807–820, p. 807.
- 16
Peter Singer. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, 3 (1972): 229–243; Brian Barry. “International Society from a Cosmopolitan Perspective.” In International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, edited by D. Mapel, T. Nardin, 144–163. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Charles Beitz. “Social and Cosmopolitan Liberalism.” International Affairs 75, 3 (1999): 515–529.
- 17
Michael Walzer. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Michael Walzer. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. (New York: Basic Books, 1983); Alasdair MacIntyre. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); Michael Sandel. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Will Kymlicka. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Will Kymlicka. Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Jeff McMahan. “The Limits of National Partiality.” In The Morality of Nationalism, edited by R. McKim, J. McMahan, 107–138. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Richard Dagger. Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
- 18
David Miller. “The Ethical Significance of Nationality.” Ethics 98, 4 (1988): 647–662; David Miller. On Nationality. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); David Miller. Citizenship and National Identity (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000).
- 19
Miller 1995, 2000 op. cit.
- 20
Miller 1995 op. cit., 96.
- 21
Miller 1995 op. cit., 72.
- 22
Jeffrey Schoenblum. “Taxation, the State, and the Community.” Social Philosophy and Policy, 23, 2 (2006): 210–234, p. 225.
- 23
Schoenblum op. cit.
- 24
Walker op. cit., 9.
- 25
Frankman op. cit., 15.
- 26
Brock op. cit., 14.
- 27
Thomas Rixen. The Political Economy of International Tax Governance. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
- 28
Paul Pierson. “Post-Industrial Pressures on the Mature Welfare States.” In The New Politics of the Welfare State, edited by Paul Pierson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001): 80–106; Robert Wade. “Globalization and Its Limits: Reports of the Death of the National Economy are Greatly Exaggerated.” In National Diversity and Global Capitalism, edited by Suzanne Berger, Ronald Dore. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
- 29
Brzoska op. cit.
- 30
Brzoska op. cit., 159.
- 31
Brock 2010 op. cit., 154.
- 32
Ibid.
- 33
Ibid.
- 34
Pogge 1992, 1994 op. cit.
- 35
David Held. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995): 233.
- 36
Brock 2010 op. cit., 143.
- 37
Tax Justice Network op. cit.
- 38
Roland Paris. “The Globalization of Taxation? Electronic Commerce and the Transformation of the State.” International Studies Quarterly 47 (2003): 153–182.
- 39
Reich op. cit.; McVeigh op. cit. Sidney Tarrow. “Why Occupy Wall Street is Not the Tea Party of the Left.” Foreign Affairs (October 10, 2011).
- 40
Brock op. cit., 164.
- 41
Brock 2008 op. cit., 165.
- 42
Larry Diamond. Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 82.
- 43
The Economist. “Places in the Sun.” (2007) http://www.economist.com/node/8695139?story_id=8695139.
- 44
Dhammika Dharmapala, James R. Hines. “Which Countries become Tax Havens?” Journal of Public Economics 93, 9 (2009): 1058–1068.
- 45
Myron J. Frankman. “Global Taxation: A Search for Generalizable Precedents.” Journal of Economic Issues 31, 2 (1997): 641–648.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin / Boston
