International Taxation
for redistribution without borders
Tax is a mechanism for direct redistribution: when applied progressively, it chops money off the top of the economy (by taxing the wealthiest more) and pumps it back in across society, via infrastructure spending, public services and social security. Tax justice is therefore vital in the fight to secure our human rights and create a more equal society.
However, the redistributive benefits of tax currently stop at the border. Even though tax is seen as vital to improve equality within countries, there are currently no taxes that move money between countries. This leaves global inequalities untouched, and does nothing to rectify the injustices and imbalances that have accrued over the past few centuries. We are clearly missing a trick: if tax is the main way in which we guarantee human rights and secure equality nationally, why not use it internationally for the same goals?
Equal Right is working with partners around the world to develop the new concept of international taxation. This is envisaged as an additional layer of tax that would complement existing national and local taxes, to ensure that human rights are secured and equality is supported worldwide. We are beginning this work by exploring three potential taxes:
An international wealth tax
An international financial transactions tax (FTT)
An international carbon tax (which we call a carbon charge
- see our climate justice page for more details)
To find out more, use the buttons below to read our briefings on international wealth tax and FTT, and on the role that the UK government could play in addressing global inequality through taxation. If you'd like to discuss these topics further and help to build the campaign for change, please click the button to join our working group or contact Laura Bannister at info@equalright.org
Tax for Global Justice
Our atmosphere is global. Climate change, caused primarily by wealthy communities in the Global North, leads to a loss of land, rights and livelihoods in the Global South and for disadvantaged communities everywhere. The climate justice movement, which has emerged from Black, Indigenous and youth activist networks, demands that these issues be addressed in our global response to the climate emergency.
Funding climate action at the necessary scale is an immense global challenge. Funding climate justice - in which the inequities linked to climate change are also addressed - is harder still. Where could the money come from? And how could we ensure that climate mitigation and climate justice can proceed hand in hand?
Cap and share aims to provide part of the answer. It offers a radical but practical solution that could halt fossil fuel extraction, fund a global green transition, and return extracted wealth to communities all over the world.
The full paper presents a proposal for how climate reparations, redistribution and finance could actually happen, and how we could work together at the global level to achieve this.1 It outlines a workable international system that would simultaneously end fossil fuel extraction and build the alternatives we need, while redistributing long overdue financial resources back to the global majority. This paper is a standalone briefing of that more detailed proposal.