The WEF wants more Global Taxes and the Colombian Government is leading the Initiative

Many readers probably remember the fateful year 2021, in which, among other abuses, the Davos elites announced their intention to create a global minimum tax for a “fair economic recovery” after the economic disaster generated by the pandemic. This initiative, which seemed to have stalled, has received a new impetus with the announcement by the Colombian government, within the framework of the 2022 World Economic Forum, to hold a “Latin American summit for a global, inclusive, sustainable and equitable taxation”. As is to be expected with everything that comes from the Davos Forum, this idea of creating a global tax framework is presented as a positive transformation, in favor of the  Global South  working classes. However, a closer examination of the proposal indicates the opposite.

‘Inclusive’ global taxation: the economic warfare strategy against the Global South

In January 2021, the World Economic Forum published an article on its website outlining the need for a new global tax framework as part of its global reengineering plan called the Great Reset:

“The Great Reset” set out by the World Economic Forum calls for addressing “the inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems”, including those in government. With their greater roles and taxpayer and transaction-level data, tax authorities have the opportunity to become very citizen-centric and work to ensure that all decisions are grounded in facts and driven by data”.

This new global tax framework became a reality in June 2022 when, during the World Economic Forum, this new tax system was announced after 140 countries joined the proposal.

According to the Davos Forum announcement and the information provided by Reuters, these countries agreed to implement a global minimum tax of 15% to large corporations to avoid the competition generated by tax exemptions. So, at first glance, the intention seems quite laudable since it would oblige these companies to pay their fair share in the poor countries of the Global South that offer them juicy tax breaks. However, things are not as wonderful as they seem. In reality, the US and other powerful countries want a 15% global tax rate so that big companies leave developing nations and return to powerful countries, where the tax rate will be the same since tax competition would have been eliminated. When developing countries can no longer offer them anything in return in tax matters, companies will simply leave to establish themselves in rich countries where investments are less risky and profits are higher. In a few words, this is nothing more than a project designed by the rich nations to repatriate their industries after these corporations relocated in Global South nations (China is the best example) where production costs are lower, partly because of tax breaks and low salaries. This is what a Reuters article said about the subject: “Taxing rights on more than $125 billion of profit will be additionally shifted to the countries where they are earned from the low tax countries where they are currently booked. Economists expect that the deal will encourage multinationals to repatriate capital to their country of headquarters, giving a boost to those economies.” This is what the Colombian government is promoting with its initiative for a “global, inclusive, sustainable and equitable taxation”: a plan to deindustrialize and impoverish the Global South, already shaken by the economic crisis of the Covid pandemic.

The plan mentioned above, however, is not the only negative thing hidden behind this initiative, apparently so commendable and noble. Taxes on big business are just one part of the global tax framework the World Economic Forum is pushing for, with the support of the Colombian government. The other part of this new global tax framework is aimed at burdening citizens with more taxes, as explained by the Colombian Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, during the event Towards a global, inclusive taxation, sustainable and equitable. Bonilla said: “I want to point out that the tax reform carried out in Colombia is going in the right direction, it increases the taxation of natural persons, but not enough. That will have to increase more in the medium term and it will have to be balanced with corporate taxation which is very large today”. The tax initiative of the Davos Forum does not only aim to bring large corporations to heel, but also to take away from the people the right to decide on national taxation policies and put it in the hands of global bureaucracy. So this is nothing more than another measure to strip citizens from the Global South of their sovereignty, who would have to submit to the tax rate imposed by powerful countries through international organizations.

The centralization of the tax system

The idea of a global tax framework is a way to centralize decision-making when it comes to taxes. In such a system, national governments would lose all control over tax rates, which would be dictated from above by the global technocracy. It is, therefore, a centralization since more power is being transferred to the Western elite, which would no longer only decide on the taxes in Western nations but also in the Global South. In this sense, it is a totally undemocratic initiative since it goes against the guiding principle of all democracy: the principle of division. As the French anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon pointed out in his well-known work The Federative Principle (1863), all political regimes point to two types of societies: authoritarian societies and free societies. The difference between them is the structure adopted by the State in both cases. In authoritarian regimes, power is centralized, which means that all State resources are channeled to the ruling class, which, therefore, has a great power. In a free society power is divided, precisely to prevent power from concentrating in the ruling class or a faction that could abuse it. James Madison, one of the Founding Fathers of American democracy, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787, says that: “In a large society, the people are broken into so many interests and parties, that a common sentiment is less likely to be felt, and the requisite concert less likely to be formed, by a majority of the whole… Divide et Impera, the reprobated axiom of tyranny, is under certain qualifications, the only policy, by which a republic can be administered on just principles”

The intention to create a global centralized tax framework is totally undemocratic. But it is what you can expect from the WEF, which published a joint letter in the Oxfam website in support of the Colombian government initiative. In it the WEF says that “Colombia and Chile have adopted progressive tax reforms at a national level. Now it is necessary to take a step towards a regional agreement  to increase tax collection,guarantee rights, combat privileges and prosecute tax abuse”, words with which the WEF conceal the intention of squeezing citizens, impoverishing them further in the name of human rights, to further empower and enrich the rotten Western elites, now in decay.

The US and its Western allies do not hide their concern about China’s high economic development, achieved largely thanks to the relocation of American industry in China since 1970. Now this same Western elite, who in the past favored the deindustrialization of their own economies regardless of the harm to local workers, wants to repatriate local industries with two goals: The first is to stop the economic development of the Global South and prevent it from becoming another China, for which they need to eliminate tax competition that gives developing countries advantages; and secondly, this initiative is aimed at stripping poor countries of more sovereignty, whose taxes would be set by the rich countries through international organizations. It is, therefore, another betrayal by the Latin American left to the peoples of the Global South, to the working classes whom it claims to represent, whose countries it is condemning to poverty and to a greater imperialist domination.