Chris Leslie MP, a member of the Labour shadow treasury team, said this in his weekly email to constituents and other interested parties yesterday: The time has come for George Osborne to get serious about a financial transaction tax (an ‘FTT’, also sometimes called a ‘Robin Hood Tax’). If ever there was a time to
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Fantastic news from Europe, via the BBC: EU ministers have given the go ahead for 11 eurozone members, including France and Germany, to prepare a new financial transactions tax. The approval under “enhanced co-operation” rules allows the smaller group to pioneer the tax. Governments previously failed to agree to impose the tax across the entire 27-member
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As I’ve mentioned already today, this is a week of pretty intense campaigning for a Robin Hood Tax – a tax on financial transactions. I wrote about this quite a bit in a report I did in 2009 called Taxing Banks. The data will be a little different now but the principle remains the same – which is that banks are
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Tim Worstall, who likes to think of himself as my bete noire, but who is actually a rather pedantic former UKIP press secretary (which explains why most of the world treat him with all the respect due to such a person) has published what he calls a report for the Institute of Economic Affairs, the right wing fundamentalist
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I wrote the following for CIPFA’s Public Finance blog last week and now share it here: “A decade ago almost no one had ever heard of Tobin taxes, financial transaction taxes or what have since been popularly called Robin Hood taxes. This week the European Union has proposed that such a tax be introduced across the EU.
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Just seemed worth a quick revisit today

1,000 economists (with me included in that number) have written to the G20 and Bill Gates to call for a financial transaction tax. We said: Dear G20 Finance Ministers and Bill Gates, We write to you as the call for a Financial Transaction Tax is now gathering global momentum, and the French government has made
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Just done a gig under the above title for the New Economics Foundation at Amnesty International’s offices in London. The subject – taxing banks. Dave Hillman of the Robin Hood Tax gave that subject a good airing. Tony Greenham of nef covered all their dimensions – and there ae many. And I guess I talked
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A new EDM, number 1579, has been tabled in Parliament in support of a financial transaction tax. It says: FINANCIAL TRANSACTION TAX Caroline Lucas John McDonnell Bob Russell That this House welcomes the vote by the European Parliament in favour of two resolutions on 8 March 2011 proposing the introduction of a Robin Hood tax
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