1/4% Tax on all stock trades pushed in NY Times today

Is that German exchange Chairman correct about "unregulated exchanges"?

"A financial transaction tax would be "a gift for the unregulated exchanges," said Deutsche Boerse Supervisory Board Chairman Manfred Gentz.

"Gentz was referring to a slew of so-called alternative trading platforms which have emerged as a threat to listed exchanges like Deutsche Boerse by picking up some of their trading volume in recent earnings quarters."

Can't US tax-hungry officials still capture foreign alternative trading platforms? Or maybe they can never see the transaction history.

If this German Chairman is right, it's a significant flaw that can not be corrected easily and that alone defeats FTT in their protect-their-home-market collective views.
 
re: UK stamp tax
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/financial-transactions-tax-2008-12.pdf

There has been a long historical experience with FTTs in both the United States and around the
world. Substantial transactions taxes were imposed in most financial markets until the last two
decades, when political pressure from the financial sector, coupled with the threat from increased
global competition, led most countries to substantially reduce or eliminate their taxes. Nonetheless,
many taxes still remain in place, most notably the 0.5 percent stamp tax imposed on each trade on
the London stock exchange. This tax raises more 4 billion pounds annually, the equivalent of almost
$40 billion in the U.S. economy.

There are two reasons that it is noteworthy that the UK continues to impose its stamp tax, and
manages to raise a substantial amount of revenue. First, it indicates that the tax is indeed
collectable.2 The UK tax applies to stock trades for firms that are incorporated in the UK, regardless
of where the trades take place. While enforcement of the tax on trades that take place outside of the
UK is undoubtedly poor, this law limits the extent to which firms would have incentive to list
elsewhere to escape the tax.
 
Quote from listedguru:

So I guess it was on the agenda but never got discussed:) Thats gotta be a slap in Brown's face.

-Guru

That's how I interpreted it as well. If true, that's obviously good news. I'll be on the lookout for further confirmation.
 
Every time a FTT proponent raises the UK stamp tax as precedent, our reply should be the following. Why does the UK stamp tax exempt banks and fall on the little guy mostly? My understanding is that 70% of transactions, mostly in banks and brokers are exempt from the stamp duty tax.

Shouldn't that bank exemption from the stamp duty tax be repealed before any new taxes are suggested on the middle-class? This suggestion will cause a firestorm with UK banks and they will help defeat it. We need to take away this increasing debating point on their side.

There are other apples and oranges tax issues with the UK stamp tax too; in connection with income tax credits, non-domiciled residents not paying UK taxes on offshore accounts, the new flat tax and more, but too complex for now. Bottom line, stamp tax is a way for the UK to tax otherwise-non-taxed offshore accounts for non-domiciled residents. In the past, the UK was a tax haven of sorts for others in Europe, but that is changing fast!

-------------------------

Other UK articles today seem to be doing the classic mistake we saw with US journalists, lumping financial-transaction tax into the same boat as a levy on banks. The TimesOnline article just posted is entirely on the levy, yet the headlines has financial-transaction tax. Correct them at every juncture. If the writer does not understand the difference, they have no business writing on this minefield of a story.
 


That's just Gordon Brown spewing the same bullshit rhetoric. He just can't stand the fact that the U.S. continues to ignore his rants and homo love fest with this transaction tax. He obviously knows that the IMF is not going to back his proposal when they issue their preliminary findings in April, so he's once again trying to stage another pom pom pep rally among the G-20 countries to enact this before the IMF report comes out. I'm so glad he'll be out of office soon. :D
 

Brown's last ditch attempt to sell his FTT idea before the IMF comes out against it (and Germany and France retreat). It was already said today that the FTT wasn't discussed at the G7 meeting today even though it was 'on the agenda.' Brown is looking more silly by the day. The US has taken center stage with their proposed bank levy and so called "Volcker rules." If any sort of int'l concensus were to be reached it would be on some sort of banking tax or insurance type levy (and not a FTT or Tobin Tax).

Brown and the FTT are dead IMHO...

-Guru
 
Lord Myners talking about today's meeting:

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"There are some things like transaction taxes which simply wouldn't work unless they were implemented across the board. They are intellectually appealing but from a practical purpose need global implementation."
 
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