EU Financial transaction tax

[i am nobody]

these are not substitutes and only make money for the brokers.

If this financial transaction tax will kill markets, there will be other markets that will be created, or they will move to other places. Money will always look for the way with the lowest resistance.
This FTT was already spoken about in 2008. And there is still no tax.

 

[benwm]

What has changed in respect of the likelihood since this:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...arch-reckoning-for-eu-push-on-transaction-tax

I wrote that I would leave this thread after the OP's request, but that story seems to run contrary to what the OP claimed when he wrote, "It's seems very probable that EU will introduce it after the UK referendum." I don't think my asking for some facts behind such scaremongering claims is polluting the thread, as the OP suggested. Am I being asked to leave the thread because there's actually no substance behind this claim?

In fact, the Bloomberg story steve2222 posted suggests the whole FTT idea was falling apart not so long ago, NOT gaining momentum.

Here are some quotes from that article:-
Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling said European efforts to agree on a common financial-transaction tax may fall apart if not enough nations are willing to move forward by next month.

“If some countries leave we have no more to discuss,” Schelling said. “I will try to find the solution at the next meeting which will be held in March.”

So March has come and gone, are you saying there have been new developments that I've missed?

I stand ready to be corrected by the OP, but until some new information is presented I regard such claims as pure scaremongering. It's quite likely that I've "googled" about this topic over the course of several years more than the OP has. And what you'll typically find at the top of the google hits are a plethora of left leaning robin hood proposals about "taxing bankers", not the reality of what FTT entails.

Let's look beneath the surface here..

The crux of the matter is that the EU socialist countries that lap up this stuff are DEPENDENT on long term financing. Do they really want to cut off their nose to spite their face and stoke up another EU crisis by destroying liquidity in bond and related hedging markets? So if anything gets implemented, and that's a BIG if, the only way it will get through is if last minute exemptions are made for market makers such as Goldman Sachs and various connected banks. What you'll end up with is a watered down version that impacts pensioners, savers, farmers and small time daytraders. The EU bureacrats could theoretically push through this watered down version and claim victory. But more likely, they've probably finally realised that the entire proposal is impractical and full of holes.

So I'm asking the OP again if he is privy to some new information? Or does he just have some surface knowledge based on some cheap hack socialist article that he just read online? I don't read the New Statesman so I wouldn't know about these things. Perhaps he/she can enlighten us and then we can move on to the question of what to do if the FTT is introduced?

Most likely the OP still wants me to leave the thread because his claim is completely unsubstantiated and he's taken my question to clarify his original claims as some form of personal affront. Please don't take what I've said personally. I'm just trying to clarify the facts behind the original statement, which so far the OP has been unwilling to support with any evidence.

 

[i am nobody]

News from the last few weeks:

http://www.euronews.com/business-ne...s-financial-transaction-tax-talks-deadlocked/

Article Handelsblatt, Germany:
Financial Transaction Tax Dies Quietly

BY RUTH BERSCHENS AND JAN HILDEBRAND

After years of negotiations, European states may be quietly shelving the financial transaction tax, Handelsblatt has learned.


The much-heralded financial transaction tax, originally proposed by 11 countries in the 28-country European Union to charge banks for their financial-crisis failures, increasingly appears to be dead in the water.

While a high-level group of officials is still working on the project, sources close to the German government now rate its chances of success at close to zero. The Berlin government, which has been among the most active supporters of the tax, is now reluctantly concluding that “fewer and fewer states believe in it.”

In spite of many years of negotiations, the E.U. working group remains deeply divided on how to implement the tax on financial market transactions. One country, Estonia, has already pulled out of the longstanding talks. Belgium may soon follow. A new report from E.U. lawyers has eased the way for more countries to exit the talks.

 

[i am nobody]

In spite of many years of negotiations, the E.U. working group remains deeply divided on how to implement the tax on financial market transactions. One country, Estonia, has already pulled out of the longstanding talks. Belgium may soon follow. A new report from E.U. lawyers has eased the way for more countries to exit the talks.

Yesterday the Belgian Finance Minister confirmed that he wants to pull out and forget about the FTT. If this happens the FTT in Europe will be dead as at least 9 of the 11 member states should agree to apply the tax.

 

[i am nobody]

Update:
Investors bought in the first four months, 48 percent less "small index" traded shares.
Small index shares are shares of smaller companies.
There is very little interest in new IPOs of startups. And 90% of subscribers come from outside of Belgium where the tax does not exist.
In Belgium exist an exchange fee and since 2016 a speculation tax. Since the introduction of the speculation tax, paid stock exchange taxes fell by 55%. The two taxes together fell 29% short of the stock exchange tax only in the last year.
So raising taxes or introducing new taxes diminished the total amount of taxes collected. Like predicted (Laffer curb).

 

[i am nobody]

Update:

Euronext Brussel Option market is preparing a possible close and move from Belgium to the Netherlands. Volumes crashed and there is almost no market anymore. Companies will close and lay off people. These companies will pay no taxes anymore and government will have to pay a monthly unemployment allowance to all the people that got laid off. This allowance is not limited in time and will continue till these people find another job.
In the Netherlands taxes similar to the Belgian taxes don't exist, which explains the move.
It looks that the government will lose more and more money. The final result will be a loss after introducing the speculation tax, especially with a lot of people that will go to unemployment and will have to be paid an allowance by the government. This scenario was already predicted a long time ago.

FTT will only generate losers, on both sides. Nobody will win.

 

[vicirek]

Update:


FTT will only generate losers, on both sides. Nobody will win.

Common sense does not apply here. Socialists motto is "the worst it gets (economically) the better for us (gaining and maintaining power)". FTT is not an economic agenda. It s strictly political. Socialists do not need transparent and independent markets that can call on their ignorance and incompetence. The more exchanges will close the better for them.

 

[i am nobody]

Common sense does not apply here. Socialists motto is "the worst it gets (economically) the better for us (gaining and maintaining power)". FTT is not an economic agenda. It s strictly political. Socialists do not need transparent and independent markets that can call on their ignorance and incompetence. The more exchanges will close the better for them.

But the socialists have one problem: they like to spent other people's money, but if these "other people" leave or don't exist anymore, where will these socialists steal money then?

 

[vicirek]

But the socialists have one problem: they like to spent other people's money, but if these "other people" leave or don't exist anymore, where will these socialists steal money then?

They print money which is the easiest form of stealing and if it does not work they resort to slave labor. Remember, you dealing with criminal element and as all criminals they are masters of disguise.

 

[i am nobody]

Belgian minister of finance, Johan Van Overtveldt has serious doubts about the speculation tax that was introduced in 2016. The tax did not generate the amount of money that was expected. Because of changed behavior of traders, also other taxes generate less money now. The total picture shows that total income from taxes now are lower then they were before the introduction of the speculation tax. More taxation lead to lower income for the government.

There are three options according to the minister: correct, abolish or replace the speculation tax.