The OECD, although a frequent villain, is not the only threat to fiscal sovereignty. Organizations such as the UN have long sought to tax carbon, financial transactions, and even emigration. But the latest in a long list of attempts to institute international taxes comes from a more surprising source, the World Health Organization. The WHO not only wants nations to drastically increase cigarette taxes, they want a cut off the top in order to build a multi-billion dollar slush fund.
Kelsey Zahourek at Americans for Tax Reform writes, “The latest foray into global taxation is calls by international organizations and the WHO to institute a global tax on tobacco products through the Solidarity Tobacco Contribution to fund international projects aimed at alleviating global poverty,” and correctly observes that “the bigger question is should unelected bureaucrats be able to dictate the domestic policy of a country with very little oversight or transparency. This idea should make anyone uneasy, no matter the funding source, and the answer should be a resounding no.”
Creating international taxes to feed bloated international organizations and for use at the discretion of unelected bureaucrats is a recipe for waste, fraud and abuse. As Dan Mitchell has pointed out, “A supra-national taxing authority inevitably would mean bigger government and more statism. As such, it doesn’t matter whether the new global tax is imposed on financial transactions, carbon emissions, tobacco, the Internet, munitions, foreign exchange, pollution permits, energy, or airline tickets. …Once the precedent of global taxation has been established, then it’s a relatively simple matter for politicians to augment the first levy with additional taxes.”
