Eurozone officials are seeking to make this design more watertight by requiring any financial product issued by a government or company in the transaction tax area also be subject to the levy, regardless of where the parties executing the trade are based.
âIt is a belt-and-braces approach,â said one European official, who compared the measure to stamp duty. However, its implementation is legally contentious and will inevitably lead to flare-ups with Britain, particularly over how the tax is collected.
The most radical option under consideration is to collect the tax via the post-trade plumbing of the financial system, through which financial transactions are cleared and settled. This could potentially allow eurozone governments to tax euro-denominated derivatives trades, which are much harder for the taxman to capture, even when they take place between two British institutions.
One key decision pending in Brussels could make this easier. If NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse win approval next month for a merger to create the worldâs biggest exchange, the majority of European exchange traded derivatives would be cleared in Frankfurt, giving eurozone governments the chance to slap a levy on trading in most euro-denominated products, even when it involves London institutions. One eurozone diplomat said: âIt is clear that if we had to do something at the eurozone level it would have to be designed in such a way that it would not be an unfair benefit to London if it decides not to join.â
There are serious legal questions over an aggressive design of a eurozone-only tax and contingency planning is at an early stage.
French officials are in contact with Germany to produce a paper on a transaction tax before the Brussels summit with a view to proceeding without Britain and any other countries that refuse to take part.