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Tobin tax, tax credit: Europe backwards

In Brussels

A week after the breakthrough achieved on supervision, Europe barely move on the financial tax. If the principle of a levy on banks seems established, the idea of a levy on financial transactions – or Tobin tax – continues to raise doubts.

Proponents of the idea of taxing financial transactions, Germany and France have once again found Tuesday lack of consensus on the subject with their partners. "It's technically feasible, practically difficult, politically and financially desirable random," Christine Lagarde summarized the outcome of a meeting of finance ministers of the Twenty-Seven, in Brussels.Lagarde and her German counterpart Wolfgang Schauble, had written in July to the Belgian Presidency of the European Union to put the idea on the carpet, after the collapse of talks on the subject during the last G20 Toronto in June

Relocation outside Europe

Austria Tuesday reiterated his support for this initiative. Others were less enthusiastic. "We do not want new taxes on transactions," he assured the Swede Anders Borg. "This could be detrimental to revenue," he added, while expressing concern over a possible relocation of financial activities outside Europe.Sweden speaks knowingly to have been the unfortunate experience of a tax on financial transactions in the 1980s, established unilaterally and that caused a leak of the undertakings concerned payday loans.

In more measured terms, the Spanish Finance Minister, Elena Salgado, has also expressed its doubts on the subject, because of "great practical difficulties of implementation. The Commission itself has expressed reservations on the "feasibility" of this tax, in a preparatory document for Ecofin.

Coping is common but essential if France wants to bring this matter again when it takes the head of the G20, in November, and persuade the United States, Canada and China.In August, Nicolas Sarkozy had set ambitious goals for the presidency of the G20, by announcing three major projects (regulation of the commodity market, exchange market reform and global governance).

The tax credit is a subject more consensual, Europeans are agreed on the principle in the spring. But, again, differences remain on how and disposition of proceeds from this tax. France in particular refuses he is assigned to a resolution fund and requests that the proceeds go directly to the state budget.

The Commission, meanwhile, has made proposals on modalities, by requiring that the basis used is "the liabilities of the institution of deposits and capital, and that the fee be imposed by each Member State on institutions it supervises and its subsidiaries operating abroad.

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