The language tax is an economic

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 concept proposed by the Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 economist Philippe Van Parijs

Philippe Van Parijs

Philippe Van Parijs is a Belgian philosopher and political economist, mainly known as a proponent and main defender of the basic income concept.-Education:...

. It is intended to compensate countries with a less widespread language for their expenses for teaching and translation.

Van Parijs points out that Jonathan Pool

Jonathan Pool

Jonathan Pool, born 1942 in Chicago, is a political scientist from the United States. He works on the political and economic consequences of linguistic circumstances and language policy....

 had proposed this kind of taxation in 1991 but criticizes Pool's proposal to distribute the cost of language learning on a per capita

Per capita

Per capita is a Latin prepositional phrase: per and capita . The phrase thus means "by heads" or "for each head", i.e. per individual or per person...

 basis.

An analogous concept is found in the work of the Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 economist François Grin

François Grin

François Grin is a swiss economist. One of his research fields is the economics of language.Grin studied economics at the University of Geneva, where he obtained a doctorate summa cum laude in 1989...

, who argues that such countries are implicitly paying an impôt linguistique (literally also meaning "language tax") to countries with a "strong" language. In a similar sense, the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 Radical Party

Partito Radicale

The Radical Party was a political party in Italy. For decades it was a bastion of liberalism and radicalism in Italy and proposed itself as the strongest opposition to the Italian political establishment, which was seen as corrupt and conservative...

speaks of a tassa inglese ("English tax").