reuters: Chirac to back "globalisation tax" talks
According to Reuters, French President Jacques Chirac has proposed a worldwide tax on "globalisation", whatever that means. [ed: I cannot begin to imagine the horrors of having to fill in a UN tax return form]
The sources said Chirac rejected the existing "Tobin Tax" proposal to raise levies purely on foreign exchange transactions but would call in a speech to the summit for discussion on a wider tax on wealth generated by globalisation. "It could be a tax on airplane tickets, on carbon dioxide, on health products sold in industrialised countries, and indeed on international financial transactions," one source said. [...] European officials have noted possible problems with the tax, proposed by U.S. Nobel Prize winner James Tobin in the 1970s. One is that financial markets would simply move to those countries that chose not to apply the tax. (see www.swissinfo.org)