Europe rejects UK's financial transaction tax challenge

[Dubious]

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.

The EU's Court of Justice described the UK's challenge as premature, since the details of the tax had not been finalised.

The FTT will be adopted by 11 EU states, but not by Britain.

The UK said it was prepared to take further legal action.

Continued challenge
"The government is determined to continue to ensure that the interests of countries outside of the single currency, but inside the single market, are properly protected," a UK Treasury spokesman said.

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.

Those countries had not yet decided how the tax will work, the court said, so the UK's challenge was premature.

The City of London could be hit by the tax if, for example, a British firm trades with branches of French or German banks based in the capital.

'Rich square mile'

"Once the tax has been worked through, then that is when the UK needs to step in and challenge any extra-territorial elements of that tax," said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at international accounting body ACCA.

"That is when I think they could win if the tax is not modified quite drastically."

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has previously said the tax was "not a good idea" and that it would not work unless applied globally.

And UK Chancellor George Osborne has also raised concerns that the cost of the tax would be passed on to pensioners and savers.

But campaigners have said the tax would raise valuable funds for public services, and accused the UK government of "defending one rather rich square mile".


BBC News - Europe rejects UK's financial transaction tax challenge

 

[flamer84]

i think that in 2017 we're going to part ways with the Caliphate of London.

 

[Ceonwulf]

i think that in 2017 we're going to part ways with the Caliphate of London.

I hope so too. It isn't fair that London must give billions and billions every year to the EU, just so poor countries *cough* Romania *cough* can sponge off of the rich.

Romania is one of the most pathetic, unimportant and boring countries on the face of the planet.

In truth, when London exits the EU, it will be a sad day for Europe because London is very powerful, has allot of influence and is very wealthy. If Bucharest left the EU nobody would care, because Romania has nothing to offer but gypsies, cheap prostitutes and slave labour.

 

[iajj]

I hope so too. It isn't fair that London must give billions and billions every year to the EU, just so poor countries *cough* Romania *cough* can sponge off of the rich.

Romania is one of the most pathetic, unimportant and boring countries on the face of the planet.

In truth, when London exits the EU, it will be a sad day for Europe because London is very powerful, has allot of influence and is very wealthy. If Bucharest left the EU nobody would care, because Romania has nothing to offer but gypsies, cheap prostitutes and slave labour.

ya, london must be more valuable to germany than romania. lol. a hole punched to the middle of europe versus a small attachment less meaningful than the appendix. is that how gangbazi think? that a piece of land that connects everything can be less valuable than a tiny city living on the margin of politics?

 

[mike2000]

I think any tax raised is a secondary good. I wouldn't mind if all the money raised was placed on a bonfire, or stolen by politicians. I know it can do a lot of good, but I don't expect it to do a lot of good. I would even be happy if instituting the tax caused an overall drop in tax.
I think the main objective, the greatest good, is that this will damage the financial sector. It will encourage very rich people to leave our shores. It will lose domestic jobs from the financial market. I have no doubt that people who earn a vast amount while paying little tax will stop paying that little tax. It will lower our economic figures. Some banks, corporations, investors, etc will flee abroad.
This is why. We can't afford this 'industry' to fail. The British public can't afford to bail it out. We could barely afford to bail out the minimal failure we had a few years ago, and the poor paid for that rather than the rich, often with their lives.
It's too imbalanced, too gross.
If you have a big tree with huge foliage and branches but no root structure, then it blocks the sunlight for new growth. Eventually it gets unstable and crushes whatever is near it when it falls. Now it can grow for a long time, and increase in mass impressively each year, but one year it is going to fall, and the older and bigger it is the more damage it causes to everything else. While the little birds that thrived on it's canopy just fly on to the next huge tree ready to topple.
And this stupid Nigel think being outside the EU would make our position stronger on this. The ftt will not apply in the UK if it goes ahead. So what the government is doing is trying to prevent it going ahead in other countries. It can try to do this because we are in the EU. How does Nigel think we could even try to so this from outside the EU.