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UN mulls role of global taxman
RANTBURG eat your heart out.
For those who worry the United Nations doesn’t already deal with enough red tape, the UN General Assembly began discussing a proposal to set up an international tax organisation. Enough to chill the hearts of shady criminals and opponents of bureaucracy alike, the proposal was first spelled out by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in a report earlier this year. He recommended that an existing 25-person committee be expanded and upgraded to an "intergovernmental body" -- in other words, an international group along the lines of other UN agencies like UNICEF and UNESCO. The assembly began considering the proposal as part of a two-day "high-level dialogue" on how to finance international development that will feature officials from the World Bank and other key trade and financial institutions. "This is not something that would write tax codes or set global taxes," Timothy Wall, a UN information officer, told AFP.
"... at least, not yet."
"But there are a lot of sloppy, messy tax issues out there." Wall said the proposed organisation would act as a forum to help countries spell out their own standards and principles so that they could better coordinate tax policies. One issue, for example, would be corporations who "play countries off against each other" to get the best tax rates when deciding where to build new factories — a matter he said was crucial for developing nations. "Countries that should be building up their tax bases end up eroding them" by offering corporate tax breaks, he said.
Woohoo- Tax the rich countries, give to the poor dictatorships. A truly utopian, socialist World.
Posted by: rg117 2003-10-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=20580