what taxes can we collect in the future?

Although it may seem incredible, in the past months proposals have emerged that, with some nuances and, usually, with no precision, have suggested that “robots” pay taxes.

One of the candidates to lead the French Socialist Party, Benoît Hamon, recent winner of the first round of their primaries said: “If a machine replaces a man and create wealth, there is no reason that this wealth should not be taxed” (“Benoît Hamon, leader who demands to tax robots“, El País, January 23, 2017). Similarly, the leader of one of the main Spanish unions, Pepe Alvarez, has declared, “That robots should pay social security for the workers laid off because of them” (“Pepe Alvarez, leader of UGT, suggested that the robots “pay” for Social Security“, La Nueva España, October 17, 2016).

In a certain way, this reaction is understandable given the accumulation of studies that anticipate the destruction of a huge part of the current jobs because of the technological revolution underway or that, at least, point out the possible existing risks, mostly in the short and medium term. Only as an example: a study of 2013 published by Oxford University concludes that 47% of jobs in the United States are at risk. The 2016 publication, “The Future of Jobs” of the World Economic Forum, anticipates a net loss of more than 5 million jobs until 2020 in the analyzed countries. In a recent issue of a magazine of the International Monetary Fund (Finance & Development), we can find articles warning about the risks and” dark sides” of the development of smart technology.

Even without in-depth studies, who can doubt, from his or her own experience, that certain jobs are being replaced by new technologies? Bank employees; supermarkets cashiers; drivers; receptionists; travel agents…; the list could go on to fill in the space of this article.

However, those fears, these transformations are not a novelty. It is certain that the acceleration of the digital transformation and its immediate incorporation to our daily life, along with the post-crisis economic and psychological depression, can let us think that we live unprecedented times. However, we may just remember the “Luddites” of the early 19th century, or re-read “The Right to be Lazy” of Lafargue (1880), or “The Economic Possibilities of our grandchildren” by Keynes (1930) or “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russell (1932). These books remind us that humanity has been facing these challenges for a long time, and that at the same time they result from the progress of our capabilities.

Moreover, not all the current authors coincide when estimating their effects. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research believes that the productivity growth does not endorse the revolutionary hypothesis associated with the digital economy. The increase in inequality and the loss of the wages participation in the distribution of income would be determined by other factors (between 1990 and 2009 the part of wages declined in 26 of the 30 countries of the OECD). Brynjolfsson and McAfee, in their book “The Second Machine Age”, argue that the jobs loss is compensated by new emerging occupations, many of which are still unknown. The transition itself, they say, will be complex, requiring much effort and investment in education and some type of compensation for those who, in the short term cannot adapt, advocating for the introduction of some type of basic complementary income. (This last option has received abundant attention of the media, with recent experiments and proposals in Switzerland, Finland or Holland).

At this point, we come back to the beginning of this article: who will pay the cost of this education, this help, for the transition? How can we fund public activity if the wages – and their consumption capacity – decrease, when the majority of our tax revenue is based on them? In short, what taxes can we collect in the future?

There is always someone-a person-behind the benefits, providing capital -physical, knowledge, and labor-or a combination of them. It may be difficult to identify them, because of the lack of international transparency and the legal complexity of the legal figures used to organize the ownership, but there is always someone. We have not yet reached the world imagined by Karel Capek, in which “Robots” appear for the first time with that name, to declare war on humanity. A “tax on the robots” can be a great marketing idea to sell an initiative; to have headlines in the newspapers, but for now, it should- and could-be implemented much better by using our “boring” tax codes.

Moreover, we must do it carefully; otherwise, the new taxes could end up paying the “robota”, referred to in the original Czech vocabulary: “servitude”, “bonded labor”, “slavery”.

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