The government here placed a temporary 50% tax on financial bonuses above £25,000 to encourage responsible behaviour: the signs are that banks are either going to carry on regardless, or find ways to avoid it, but it's a good start. The investment banks and their friends have bankrupted the country and yet seem totally reluctant to make amends or change their behaviour, despite us saving them at huge cost to ourselves.
Over in the US, the Americans are facing similar problems: the taxpayer saved the banks, yet the economy is unreformed and bonuses are back. However, Obama seems to have decided that a bonus tax is just too easily avoided, and plans to introduce some other form of charge which can't be easily passed on, while rejecting a transactions tax. It'll be interesting to see if he can come up with something that the world's tax lawyers can't get round, but I'd support a transaction charge (a 'Tobin tax') - 0.005% of the value of each transaction would raise massive amounts of money (hundreds of billions) without limiting the bankers' freedom to conduct their business. It would be complicated, but it would be just and lucrative.
2 comments:
You make salient points as ever Vole, a Tobin Tax sounds like a great plan. Meanwhile (am I tripping?!) Boris is being critical of managerialism and resolving to introduce some 'bureaucratic red tape' as London Mayor, what will the Taxpayers Alliance say?! And Jarvis is being touted as the new Peel, it's all happening!
I'd heard that Jarvis was good, and I've just looked up the Johnson story. What a triumph for your art!
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