Here Come the Black Helicopters!

PART EIGHT Taxing the US Without Our Approval

The radical globalists and their environmentalist allies are determined to get their hands on America’s wealth any way they can. Recently, the European Union decreed that it would levy a tax—without US approval—on airline flights to and from the United States. The tax—in addition to that permitted by international treaty on all air tickets—would be to compensate for the carbon emitted by airline fuel.

The EU would give this money to give to third world nations to help them deal with climate change.

Officially, the EU demanded that the US and other nations report to Europe on the level of greenhouse gas emissions from their airplanes flying to and from Europe. If the airplanes did not reduce their emissions, the EU would impose a tax on them equal to an estimated $57 on a one-way ticket from New York to London. Collection of the tax is slated to begin in 2013. Once fully enforced, it will cost American air carriers more than $3 billion between now and 2020.

China and India have refused to comply with the reporting requirements and the US and twenty-five other countries are threatening retaliation.

The US attacked the EU tax. “ ‘The European Union is imposing this on US carriers without our agreement,’ Wendell Albright, director of the Office of Aviation Negotiations at the State Department, said…. ‘It is for the US to decide on targets or appropriate action for US airlines with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.’”¹

The United States airline industry vigorously challenged the EU’s legal right to regulate and tax a US company for conduct that is not connected to the EU and filed suit in the European Court of Justice, the European Union’s highest court.

However this dispute is resolved, the essential fact remains: Europe is claiming the power to tax the United States without our consent.

We already, of course, require airlines to collect taxes, but these levies spring from international agreements, not from unilateral actions.

For example, the US currently imposes a tax of $16.70 on all international flights originating or terminating in the United States. But our taxing powers are sharply limited by international treaties.

The EU tax is unilateral, without asking for consent from the US or other nations.

But it is a panacea for the globalists and environmentalists. Here they can tax the United States and distribute the money to the third world as they see fit!

Obviously, the tax will reduce the flow of American tourists, with their much-desired dollars, to Europe. Countries like Italy, France, Spain, and Britain, which heavily depend on American tourist money, will suffer. But to the globalists, the ability to tax America is irresistible.

This tax is being imposed despite the fact that most of a New York–London flight is over international waters, not EU countries. So where does the EU get the jurisdiction to tax American companies for greenhouse gas emissions over the ocean? When questioned, the bureaucrats at the EU don’t really provide any legal defense for their unprecedented actions. Instead, they simply claim that someone had to do it. Someone had to save the planet. So they stepped up to the plate—and they’re not backing down. But legalities have not stopped the EU bureaucrats from doing whatever it wants to do, including enacting aggressive environmental protection legislation with extraterritorial implications.

The global community, however, has its eye on much broader taxes to reap a bounty for the third world from American efforts and hard work. Nile Gardiner, writing in the Telegraph, explains that “a group of United Nations ‘independent experts’ is pushing the European Union to back a global financial transactions tax to ‘offset the costs of the enduring economic, financial, fuel, climate and food crises and to protect basic human rights.’”²

The UN continued to press the case for the new tax:

The UN doesn’t hide its goal, income redistribution, noting that “it is high time that governments re-examine the basic redistributive role of taxation to ensure that wealthier individuals and the financial sector contribute their fair share of the tax burden.”⁴

The demerits of the global tax aside, the idea that an international entity—the EU, the UN, or the G-20 group of nations—would impose a tax on American citizens and banks is outrageous. Our most fundamental sovereign right is the power of Congress to tax us. Ever since the Magna Carta, the principle has been honored in democracies of “no taxation without representation.” To backslide on this rule in order to line the pockets of third world dictators is a very dangerous and bad idea.