Will Europe's Robin Hood Tax work?
Eleven European countries have agreed to levy taxes on financial transactions (a 0.1% tax on securities trades and a .01% tax on derivatives trades). The goal is to rake in some badly needed revenue and to discourage financial speculation.
Felix Salmon thinks the so-called "Robin Hood tax" will deliver on the revenues, but won't stop speculation:
I doubt that speculators will find this tax particularly off-putting. Europe doesnâ??t suffer from the high-frequency trading that has overtaken the U.S. stock market, and these taxes are low enough that any remotely sensible financial transaction will remain sensible on a post-tax basis. Itâ??s possible that total trading volume might decline a little bit in some markets, and that would be fine: no one thinks itâ??s too low at the moment, and in the derivatives markets especially, increase in volumes generally just translates into increased rents being paid to big sell-side banks. But Iâ??m not someone who believes that speculators are causing a noticeable amount of harm in European markets: as far as theyâ??re concerned, the financial transactions tax is likely to make very little difference to a group of people who are not much of a problem in the first place.
Salmon also doubts the tax will do much harm to the European financial industry, as it's lower than London's more expensive "Stamp Duty" on financial transactions -- a duty which hasn't harmed the City's standing as a leading financial hub.
