Robin Hood Tax

[old.user4556]

The Robin Hood Tax - a tiny tax on bankers to tackle poverty and climate change here and abroad.

Workable? In favour? Against?

Good old fashioned Freddy arguing on this one please.

 

[Z^^]

cba to read but with a name like that, noway..

 

[rynnor]

I dont think it can be imposed by a single country - needs an international agreement which it probably wont get - any country that doesnt sign-up would likely gain a lot of new business,

Another difficulty lies in defining a transaction - you can be sure they will put their best lawyers onto finding loopholes.

Other than that its ok - of course we will all end up paying more somewhere to pay for it - theres no such thing as free tax money.

There was also some bloke on the beeb yesterday talking about this that said 'the banks charge us 17.5% per transaction we only want to take 0.005 or something.

Who the hell is charging 17.5%?? Sounds like hes picking some extreme case like getting cash out abroad on your credit card or something?

Most transactions are free for consumers and below a percent for the shops but hey.

Edit - Ohh - look at the 'Who are we' section - thats a real hodgepodge of different interests

 

[DaGaffer]

A deckchair moving exercise.

 

[Bugz]

A tiny tax on footballers.

A tiny tax on surgeons.

A tiny tax on anyone who earns over 100k+.

etc.

 

[rynnor]

Welcome to the Taxing Teens!

 

[Tom]

Yeah, lets tax the banks because they're the current bad boys.

Lets also ignore the fact that 100% of UK income tax is spent on welfare payments, and lets also ignore the fact that the government currently spends about £46bn annually on quangos. Think about that. £46bn on quangos.

 

[old.user4556]

Aye, saw that in the Telegraph.

 

[xane]

Why do people think taxes only affect the ones they tax ? If financial institutions are paying tax on their operations, then they just pass that on to the customer, i.e. you and me in our interest/loan/mortgage rates, pension/fund charges, insurance premiums, etc.

As rynnor says, it's only workable if met internationally, it's very easy to shift your trading off shore without even moving out of your chair.

 

[Wij]

Is this a Tobin Tax ?

If so it's a shit idea, sorry.

 

[old.user4556]

Don't know.

What these fuds don't quite get is that the banks will just pass the cost onto the public anyway.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Thing is, pays should get a bit of a recheck across the board.

Doctors makes more then nurses, firemen and police make less, way less, then politicians(biggest crapola ever).

If taxation worked towards "tax more give more" instead of "tax more government takes", it would be nice that poor would get a tiny amount(alot of money) from high earners.. Especially if the "tax more" would go to people who fall unemployed, who need it etc.

In finland, you get taxed by what you earn. So if you earn 4k/month, you get around 30%, if you earn 1.5k/month, you get a 14% or so.

The really bad thing is, if you've worked for years and fall unemployed, you get treated the same as the person who never works.

Some form of "you've paid these taxes, you're allowed to this much unemployed" would be a best solution.

 

[Chilly]

turnover taxes are always shit. tax profits = job done.

 

[pcg79]

Is this a Tobin Tax ?

If so it's a shit idea, sorry.

elaborate please?

IMO:

that website is pretty shocking in its sloppiness. firstly, how do you define a 'speculative' financial transaction anyway. they go on to talk about volumes of transactions implying that all of these would be subject to the tax: but only a page before they said it was due to target speculative transactions? does that mean mr smith buying 100 tescos shares would also be subject to the tax?? they fail to account for the loss of transaction volumes that will (probably) occur should a tax take place. they talk about exchanges vs OTC but then note that OTC transactions probably wont be covered: i would imagine the OTC stuff would be the most 'speculative' (or maybe least socially beneficial)- ie non-vanilla products.

but even if they iron out all those points (and lots more technicalities im sure) then there is the whole thing of giving these tax revenues to climate change causes etc? i dont really follow why - bankers are the bad guys at the mo but it doesnt make sense to force this one group to donate to unrelated causes (why not tax automakers instead for example?). a more sensible idea would be for the revenues to collect into a recovery fund of some kind, so if there is another banking crisis, some (all??) of the fallout can be absorbed by the bank's own (forced) set-aside.

thats assuming
a) that the tax wouldnt be (significantly) detrimental to the operation of financial markets ito decreasing liquidity, retaining the ability to hedge transactions sufficiently etc etc. i dont personally dont know about how such a tax would affect markets altho i would imagine there are papers kicking about on the web
b) some kind of international collaboration wrt the legalities, requirements, enforcement - which i imagine would be wishful thinking at best.

WRT passing taxation onto the public.. um no not necessarily. the taxes would probably be limited to 'investment banks' ie those guys servicing corporate entities wrt financing and not necessarily connected to retail clients. although i imagine there would be a certain amount of these banks passing the tax onto their (corporate) clients.
if commercial/retail banks (eg lloyds) or the commercial arm of banking conglomerates (eg the retail/commercial end of RBS) had this tax levied on them then surely that would be in opposition to the spirit of the tax (which is to limit 'speculative' transactions)? although given that retail banks will use capital markets for some funding (ie point a) above), then any reduction in depth of market could mean higher interest rates for these guys and yes, indirectly, to the public.

 

[SilverHood]

pcg79, there is already an emergency fund, it's called Tier 1 capital. As the last crisis showed us though, it was woefully lacking, especially when assets were marked by the banks themselves, rather than to market value. Goldman have always marked to market (and when there was no market, the asset values was zero). They got out of this mess relatively unhurt compared to their competitors like UBS, who had to write down over a hundred billion dollars worth of assets.


As for the tax itself... I can't see it working. The only way would it could possibly work would be a ban on unregulated transactions, and then tax them on the exchanges.

 

[Ctuchik]

theres no such thing as free tax money.

social wellfare = free tax money

 

[Aoami]

Don't know.

What these fuds don't quite get is that the banks will just pass the cost onto the public anyway.

Even if they do, it's still taxing people for a good cause.

I'm all for it.

 

[Chilly]

Even if they do, it's still taxing people for a good cause.

I'm all for it.

I'd rather reduce spending than increase taxation. Especially if some lazy wankers on the doll get the boot put in and have to work.

 

[Wij]

Since all transactions balance to zero wouldn't this raise nowt ?

And anyway - simple point is if it's raising £200 billion, then that is coming off banks profits. Profitable banks make a few billion a year in general. I'm not entirely sure how many big banks we have to be honest but I'm guessing this would cost them a few billion each. That IS a lot of money. They'd move. It's no good saying it's only a tiny fraction of each transaction and then trying to pretend that the imagined hundreds of billions are going to appear out of fresh air.

 

[yaruar]

A Tobin tax is a useful concept, but not for raising cash, it's a better way of regulating currency fluctiatons created by rampant forex speculation, which in tern helps proper businesses because they don't have to deal with changing prices, etc. I know we suffer greatly because most of the stuff we buy is based on the dollar price, which can get harsh when you deal with multi million licensing and capital expenditure budgets.

However the government would be better of removing the rediculous tax break given to brokers when they removed the tax on gambling, and immediately every broker became a bookmaker, that would probably raise a couple of billion from the offset.