Author

Topic: Europe rejects UK's financial transaction tax challenge (Read 560 times)

legendary
Activity: 3766
Merit: 1217
Already UKIP is leading the opinion polls for the Euro Elections in UK, with 30-35% of the vote. If they gets elected to the parliament in large numbers, there is absolutely ZERO chance that the British are going to agree on the Financial Transaction Tax.
legendary
Activity: 3948
Merit: 3191
Leave no FUD unchallenged
I wasn't actually aware of this financial transaction tax until just recently, I knew we had capital gains which is a tax specifically designed for this sort of thing anyway, but it looks to me like the EU is essentially trying to enforce a VAT tax on all transactions, they also mentioned currencies, could this include a move against Bitcoin?
I doubt cryptocurrencies are a factor with regard to this.  It's more to do with speculators in more traditional markets.

The problem with high frequency trading, HFT for short, is that it's being abused.  In a natural market, price discovery works by people deciding how much they want to buy and sell something for.  But with HFT, they can run a trading algorithm in such a way that it will make thousands of trades to move the market towards a predetermined price.  Essentially, you can use HFT to manipulate prices.  There's normally an article about it at least once a week on ZeroHedge

Placing a very small tax on each trade would discourage using such algorithms and hopefully put an end to at least some of the market rigging going on in the finance sector.

Many proponents of the tax argue that the funds raised could be spent on social issues, like health, education, welfare, etc.  But it remains to be seen if the UK government would actually use the money for that or not.  I have a feeling many will be disappointed as their first priority will likely (but wrongly) be setting up another tax break for the finance sector to make up for this new tax being brought in against their will.
hero member
Activity: 700
Merit: 500
Well  the EU is trying to keep everything flush more or less in terms of finance coffers so it is interesting stuff

The richer EU nations (Germany, France, UK, Spain.etc) are being forced to subsidize the less well-off nations (such as Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia). This is a hugely expensive process... and might need more and more funds from new taxes.

I was listening to some tv they were talking about how this may not be even legal because it violates an article of the EU
Not sure which one it was though
legendary
Activity: 3766
Merit: 1217
Well  the EU is trying to keep everything flush more or less in terms of finance coffers so it is interesting stuff

The richer EU nations (Germany, France, UK, Spain.etc) are being forced to subsidize the less well-off nations (such as Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia). This is a hugely expensive process... and might need more and more funds from new taxes.
hero member
Activity: 700
Merit: 500
Well  the EU is trying to keep everything flush more or less in terms of finance coffers so it is interesting stuff
hero member
Activity: 675
Merit: 514
The goal of the tax is to reduce the high frequency trading and various high risk stuff.
I think the tax is going to be 0.1% or something like that.
legendary
Activity: 3766
Merit: 1217
Slovenia (Bitstamp) too? Oh shit, I don't like that...

May be the will move to some non-EU country, such as Serbia or Macedonia. Still, sad to see all the major EU nations except the UK agreeing on it (Germany, France, Italy, Spain.etc).
legendary
Activity: 1540
Merit: 1000
Thought you guys might be interested Cheesy they're doing little segments on it but they don't seem to be keen on letting everybody know about it like the other stuff they scream about.
legendary
Activity: 2170
Merit: 1094
Slovenia (Bitstamp) too? Oh shit, I don't like that...
legendary
Activity: 1540
Merit: 1000
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27218615

Quote
Europe's top court has rejected the UK's challenge to the introduction of an EU financial transactions tax (FTT), which ministers have said will damage British firms.



Quote
The levy, often described as a Tobin tax or "Robin Hood" tax, aims to raise public funds and discourage speculative trading by taxing the transactions of shares, currencies and bonds.

Of the 27 EU member states, the 11 going ahead with the FTT are Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia.

I wasn't actually aware of this financial transaction tax until just recently, I knew we had capital gains which is a tax specifically designed for this sort of thing anyway, but it looks to me like the EU is essentially trying to enforce a VAT tax on all transactions, they also mentioned currencies, could this include a move against Bitcoin?
Jump to: