Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-08-Speech-1-139"
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"en.20100308.17.1-139"2
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"Mr President, the ECON Committee has put forward this question and resolution because some careful thinking has to be done. Last year, the committee discussed financial transaction taxes with Commissioner Kovács, who, like many, said he found the idea attractive, and we made it clear then that it would be a good idea to investigate how it would work, including the infrastructure for it.
Since then, the Commission has been investigating the subject, and we are highlighting here the large range of questions needing to be answered. There have been calls, including in the G20 last September, to make the financial sector pay for setting up stability funds and recompense for the damage that they have caused to the real economy. President Barroso has suggested using a global financial levy to fund environmental projects. The original Tobin Tax idea of using a financial transaction tax for development aid has also strongly resurfaced.
It is not the intention of this resolution to bring pressure to bear in any one direction, other than for answers and impact assessments, but, of course, we have many who are strong advocates of transaction taxes and many who have equally strong reservations about them. Nowadays, it does seem highly likely that the collection of a transaction tax is easier, even at international level, given the electronic nature of many transactions, but it is also impossible to ignore the fact that there are more alternative competing destinations for the proceeds of any tax.
One idea concerning the tax is that nobody would notice because it is so small in each instance. On the other hand, others suggest it should be used to deter excessive transactions. It seems to my committee that if the end amount collected is large – and the sums suggest so – then somebody somewhere will actually be paying. Many financial transactions are intermediate, not like end sales, so the intermediaries – banks and the like – will bear the tax. But surely the extra costs – for that is what they are – will simply be passed on to the end user. Some may say that does not matter. However, there are also other ways that taxation could be raised within financial services.
Then there is the question of who is to collect the tax and who is to decide how it is used. Here, there is even the ‘no taxation without representation’ issue. If the tax is collected in London for a derivative transaction that is uncosted, to somewhere else in the world, who says where to spend it? This question may be easier to answer if it goes to a financial stability cause in which the payers are obviously participating than if it is to go outside the financial sphere, such as to environmental projects or development aid. All these things have an international element, both on the paying side and on the spending side. We probably cannot do all these things and have all these benefits, so at the very least, choices have to be made about what we are trying to fix, the method by which it is to be done, and the primary purpose of the tax.
Finally, indeed, are we right to mix regulation with tax-raising? Are these truly complementary?"@en1
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