ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Without proper legislation, there is a risk that space becomes “the yet another economic paradise and especially tax for a few elected, generating more or less investment opportunities among states”. The study of the Eurispes Laboratory on tax and tax policies, coordinated by Giovambattista Palumbo. “The central question is not so much, as and how to tax, but above all according to what rules and criteria to redistribute the fruits of wealth produced in orbit,” explains Eurispes, urging “a future global Space Tax Law”, able, if well formulated, to “beyond the current geographical, political and legal concepts”, a regulation that “will have to recognize how the ‘space’ dimension of the economy requires a new principle of global contribution”. Some possible proposals for the construction of a future Space Tax Law shared internationally “can go from the establishment of an international space authority, to entrust the management of resources and proceeds deriving from extra-atmospheric activities, to the definition of a royalties system on the exploitation of the resources of Luna and asteroids, until the hypothesis of a tax modeled on the experience of the Web Tax, founded not so much on the place of registration of the satellite or the enterprise generated.
They could also be introduced “an Orbit Tax to finance the removal of debris and compensate for the environmental outsourcing of space activities, a progressive taxation on space mining and, in perspective, even a Space Border Tax for goods produced in space and reimported on Earth”. The basic idea is that “space taxation should not be limited to transfer terrestrial tax models into space, but should rather build a new balance between economic exploitation, sustainability and collective interest”. The proceeds of an eventual international tax “may thus fuel, on the one hand, a Sustainability Fund intended, for example, to remove spatial debris and, on the other, a Compensation Fund aimed at redistributing part of resources to countries without direct access to space, according to the principle of common heritage of Humanity”, concludes Eurispes. “The perspective is that of a tax that is not limited to establishing who has to pay, but also to those who belong, in economic and collective terms, the wealth produced beyond the terrestrial borders.”.
– photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
