Financial transactions: Commission presents its tax
Posted by adminBrussels took the leap. Despite the opposition front in the UK and strong differences between capitals, José Manuel Barroso will propose Wednesday to create a tax on financial transactions in the twenty-seven EU countries. The tax would apply from 2014 to the field the largest stocks, bonds, derivatives and structured financial products. But with the lowest possible rate: 0.1% for transactions in securities and 0.01% on products, according to the latest assumptions of the Commission. This rate floors, each state is then free to burden the tax at will and profit, as is the case for VAT.
The TTF, as amended Brussels, aims to hit 85% of financial transactions. It will be collected from banks, stock exchanges and financial services providers. Individuals and businesses will be affected only indirectly.Bank loans and mortgages, foreign exchange, insurance contracts and other financial products for individuals not included in the base, according to the draft directive obtained by Le Figaro.
The idea of the TTF is in the air since the beginning of the crisis. On the need to find new revenue for the budget adds a political justification: to charge the world at least part of the cost of public rescue operations conducted since the fall of 2008. The European Commission amounted to 4.6 trillion euros in three States' commitments to the financial sector.
Obama opposed this idea
The idea, for it may seem attractive to the taxpayer, has struggled to take off. G20, it was rejected by Barack Obama and emerging powers short term personal loan.In Europe, precisely because of global consensus, it comes up against the reluctance of countries like Sweden or the Netherlands, who fear that the EU put a bullet in the foot. Only Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel continues to bring the European project at arm's length. But the idea made its way to reduce the application to the smaller group of seventeen countries of the euro.
Parliament and the Council, where each state has a veto tax will decide the fate of the project in the coming months. For now, it is to revive the dice before the G20 summit in Cannes on November 3 and 4.The Commission expects the EU to play a pioneering role on the TTF as before on climate and other economic powers will eventually follow suit.
In this act of faith, there is still a loophole: the determined opposition of the British Treasury and the hostility of the City, which Europe generates more than half of its financial transactions. Tax in Europe "has no meaning if the markets scamper overnight to New York or Singapore, 'says there is little George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The Brussels experts recognize the danger of "offshoring" noting in their expected "extreme mobility of most financial transactions." The Commission responds by imposing low, but also by raking off: a transaction conducted in Asia or America would be taxable, since it would be conducted by a firm established in the EU.
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