A Moon Tax
Kevin Brown (JD, LLM’21) has a novel tax proposal—grounded in international law—that would allow humanity to benefit from private development of celestial properties.
Illustration by Michael Austin
A Moon Tax
Kevin Brown (JD, LLM’21) has a novel tax proposal—grounded in international law—that would allow humanity to benefit from private development of celestial properties.
We live in pretty interesting times as far as space activity goes. We’ve already seen private citizens become astronauts and entrepreneurs distill whiskey and develop pharmaceuticals in zero gravity. SpaceX and NASA have plans to build Moonbase Alpha, a lunar installation that would facilitate journeys around our solar system and likely house long-term lunar residents.
Yet, many have voiced concern over the exploitation of outer space by private interests. There are, as we all know, crises unfolding planetside that could use our funding and attention, and space whiskey looks indulgent by comparison. That being so, it seems to me that full-scale human development of Earth’s orbit, the moon, and—one day—Mars is likely inevitable.
Revenue from a tax on such activity, in particular on lunar occupation, could be used to fund global initiatives confronting challenges too large for any single nation-state to face alone, such as global warming. The tax also suggests an equitable method for regulating activity in an area that, in terms of current international law, no nation-state can own.
The revenue would come from a tax imposed on physical occupation of the lunar surface (i.e., an excise tax). The US Geological Survey recently mapped the moon’s surface, making it easy to split up into a grid of one-square-kilometer plots, or “moon units.” If you place a foreign object in a moon unit during the year, then you pay a modest fee for doing so. A few simple satellites regularly orbiting the moon could keep tabs on which moon units are occupied.
“IT IS ONLY RIGHT THAT [THE MOON] SHOULD NOT BECOME THE DOMAIN OF A SELECT FEW TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE MANY…
A global, nongovernmental authority, created by agreement among nation-states through a proceeding in the United Nations, would administer the tax. A similar entity already exists for managing fees generated under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Even if the tax were only $20,000 per moon unit, and even if only 2.5 percent of the moon’s surface were occupied (about twice the footprint of California), the tax would generate $18 billion each year. As the moon becomes increasingly occupied, the revenue would multiply accordingly.
Taxing the use of land has long offered a strong policy tool for balancing the competing interests of sustainability and privatization, and taxing use of the moon would be no different.
First, the tax would address environmental concerns by encouraging lunar occupants to conserve lunar territory. Outer space is, ultimately, a finite resource. The development of Earth’s orbit has already generated a lot of dangerous debris. The development of lunar territory will likely pose a similar threat. Further, the tax would encourage occupants to remove the objects they place on the moon after exhausting their usefulness. For instance, if a lunar mining facility shuts down but continues to be physically present, then it would deprive others from using the area for something else and potentially harm the lunar environment. Taxing continued lunar occupation would motivate companies to keep the moon clutter-free.
Second, taxing the moon to generate revenue for the benefit of our global population has firm roots in international law, embodied in the “Common Heritage of Humankind” principle. It shows up most often in treaties. Very generally, the principle acknowledges that, because some places are extremely inhospitable or incredibly far away (think Antarctica, the deep-sea floor, and locations in outer space), no single nation-state can claim sovereignty over them.
If you accept, as several widely adopted international accords do, that those places cannot legally belong to any single nation-state, then they must belong instead to all humankind. If so, then their exploitation by private interests should require a mechanism for redistributing a fraction of that extracted value to all people. The moon tax is such a mechanism.
Put another way, it is only fair. There is something floating in the night sky that every person can look up at and appreciate. It’s a symbol fundamental to some of the world’s oldest religions. It gives light in the dark to all humankind. It is only right that it should not become the domain of a select few to the detriment of the many, or—if it does—that at the very least the benefit those few derive from it may be enjoyed to some small degree by all.
