Gates can just say stuff can’t he though

Ah yes, let’s let listen to the bill gates, the guardian and the TUC for our advice on finance.

Sure, an FTT will raise lots of money, but if you think for a second it will be banks who pay it, and not their customers, and that it won’t smash financial markets (and pension funds) into the ground you a what is knoiwn as ‘a moron’.

” Britain’s stamp duty is an example of a levy on finance that works without the need for universal adoption.”

Hmmm really???!

Why is it Britain oppose a financial transaction tax and say it will not work unless its enforced on a global level,why oh why is it they claim this when according to you idiots they have that exact tax already and its functional.

Hahahahahahahaha is there a minor detail or two you leave out whilst handing your cherry picked crap to the uninformed public? – please continue..

Microsoft is a very unusually long lived company. Computer companies fly and burn. There are four big computer companies that are old and have been big for a long time (Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft) and one that is very old: IBM. There are contenders for “big for a long time” such as SAP and Oracle, but those companies have not yet endured computer revolutions.

Microsoft is a fascinating company. It is massively hierarchical, with a Human Resources department (working with project managers) placing every worker on a tier. Some workers will rise to a tier where they can buy Microsoft shares at a preferential rate.

Which is where Microsoft become interesting again. In order to provide shares to staff, Microsoft buy lots of their own shares. Microsoft can currently afford a Robin Hood tax on those buy backs.

The Bill Gates foundation is based on his shares in Microsoft and other companies. But I guess that now Bill Gates has retired, he isn’t thinking too hard.

Given that anyone who has looked into this in any detail, presumably including the author of this article, must know that the incidence of this tax will hit everyone and that it will do the square root of whistling dixie to reduce volatility, why do you buggers support it?

It is worth pointing out that nothing is stopping Bill Gates from giving his money to the Federal Treasury.

But he chose instead to set up his own charitable Trust Fund and spend the money as he sees fit, not Uncle Sam.

Why is that fine for one William Gates Junior and not the rest of us?

The authors intentions are positive how ever the fact the is he does not understand economics and he simply does not care,faced with the inconvenient truth that this tax is massively inefficient,damages the markets and economy’s in immeasurable ways while in the process increasing volatility, the list goes on..

The most clear demonstration of a complete lack of understanding we are witnessing is to push for this tax, a tax some term as “throwing sand in the wheels of finance” to push for such a tax at a time of deep economic crisis, a crisis which if mismanaged any longer by the very people who propose this tax,will easily cause a global banking melt down followed by a sustained global depression.

Mortgage back security’s and government bonds, both lightly traded instruments, and the stupidity of regulators and governments who pathed the way for the current crisis are addressed in no way shape or form by this tax yet day to day business and consumers take a huge hit, Libor,free movement of capital, price discovery, liquidity, tax incidence none of these things matter…

We hear them say it all comes down to tax design, lets not worry about Sweden’s experience the problems have been fixed. Yet what they actually mean is this time we can design it so it cant be avoided by residents because that’s the only problem they see, avoidance, they can not for the life of them understand the reasons why business entity’s do seek avoidance and the destructive outcome upon those entity’s if they cant…

I suppose the saddest part of this is that its actually believed any revenue generated will be put into action to help just causes, poverty and global warming etc. Germany and France the biggest supporters, the most heavily exposed and at risk to the debt crisis of Europe, begging for a solution to there problem.

But we don’t need to let the minor details of declaring how this revenue will be spent in rock solid terms get in the way of implementing it, just leave that for later, you can trust us..

So continue to promote the tax using the UK”s stamp duty as a shining example of it being viable while further down in the very same article pointing out the UK”s massive opposition to a viable tax its claimed they already have, then mocking there rejections and feeling proud about “backing them into a corner”.

As I’ve asked you to explain repeatedly Owen (and you say you’ll come back to me and you never do): what is the incidence of this tax?

My claim is that the incidence is over 100% and that the incidence is upon consumers.

Both of which would make it a very bad tax indeed.

Can we please have your clear explanation of why I’m wrong?

The Gates report has a glaring ommission. It states that the UK has a “stamp tax,” but never provides the rest of the details. In the UK, 75% of all transactions on the London Exchange are exempt. And 100% of all other transactions (e.g., CME, NYSE, etc.) are exempt. If you look at all the transactions that take place in the UK, less than 10% are actually subject to the stamp tax. Technically, the UK does have a stamp tax, but it affects so few transactions as to be inconsequential. If the stamp tax were applied to every transaction in the UK, the entire finance industry would leave the country.

On September 16, 2011 Anders Borg, the Swedish Finance Minister said, “We have substantial experience in Sweden. Basically most of our derivative and bond trading went to London during the years we had a financial transaction tax. So if you don’t get a solution that is universal [global] it is very likely to be detrimental for European financial markets. And from the Swedish perspective, we cannot foresee that we would introduce such a tax in our system again.” The Dutch Finance Minister, Jan Kees de Jager, has said on several occasions that the Dutch won’t support a financial transactions tax because it will drive investment capital out of the Netherlands. And Malta has made it clear they won’t agree to any EU imposed tax because it “considers taxation as a national issue and outside the EU’s remit.”

These countries oppose the FTT because they know there will be a massive exodus of capital from any nation that implements the tax.

Call it, The People’s Taxed.

Watch who pays this tax. Our investment yields will be drastically reduced, the cost of capital and therefore goods and services will rise substantially. IMF states in the Final Report For The G-20, June 2010 about the financial transaction tax, “Its real burden may fall largely on final consumers rather than, as often seems to be supposed, earnings in the financial sector. A tax levied on transactions at one stage ‘cascades’ into prices at all further stages of production.”

Trust no one. EU Tax Commissioner Semeta, “The moment in which we introduce a tax on financial transactions on a global level, of course, everything looks different. Then we can also raise the tax rates.” The president of the Dominican Republic and many others are already calling to raise the tax to 5 percent.

They failed. The two great promoters of this tax abolished theirs. Germany in 1991, France in 2008 by Sarkozy himself.

Introducing a financial transaction tax across the European Union would wipe out or displace up to 90 per cent of derivatives transactions and hit the bloc’s economic output by almost 1.8 per cent over the long term, according to an official impact assessment.

European officials argue some “mitigating effects” in the final tax design will limit the hit on the economic output to around 0.5 per cent over the long term, in part because the money collected will be invested in areas to stimulate growth.

But in the official model used by the European Commission, imposing a tax of 0.1 per cent on stocks and bond trades and 0.01 per cent on all derivatives is found to reduce long-run gross domestic product in the EU by 1.76 per cent.

Meanwhile in this scenario tax revenues generated amount to just 0.08 per cent of GDP, or €10bn, meaning the levy will cost significantly more than it raises for governments.

Mr Barroso will make the argument that the tax is emphatically justified, in spite of the hit to GDP, because of the enormous taxpayer contribution to shoring up the banking system ~ entirely due to the Euro.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53d33c34-e924-11e0-9817-00144feab49a.html#axzz1YkMj1apR

€216bn in lost GDP and millions of jobs..Owen can you please explain how all this is beneficial, and how you believe that 10, 20, how ever many billions this tax finally extracts from the economy after causing these huge loses, how on earth this amount of money is going to stretch to fund the EU, climate change, poverty and bail out funds?

Thank you.

Not one sovereign nation outside France and Germany’s Europe will countenance a market damaging tax such as the one pushed by seemingly obsessed, under-educated proponents. Most commentators, unlike G20 Treasury professionals, clearly have no training in the mathematical and statistical dynamics of market economics. In uncertain times, the last thing that independent national finance ministers want is people like Bill Gates and unions interfering in foreign tax policy.

I understand that large financial institutions are internally gearing up for the unlikely possibility of leaving the UK for welcoming foreign shores.
China, America, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, UK are just a few of the financial centers that adamantly refuse to touch this dangerous proposition. I feel embarrassed for European politicians who are truly making themselves look foolish and incompetent by not understanding the meaning of “no.” It’s just a matter of time before polite G20 “no” (2 years of “no” discourse) shifts from courteous to outright rude.

My comment is also a little late. It seems that last Friday, the G20 ministers again looked down on this proposal as unacceptable, despite the billionaire Bill Gates being asked to involve himself in an area which is so far out of his field of expertise it is almost comical. And before that Mr Barroso tried some unwanted Asian arm-twisting only to be refused – again.

I am glad to see papers and proponents claiming the hit will be 0.5 per cent over the long term this morning, without feeling the need to disclose in there articles that this is based on the theory of collected revenue being invested and stimulating growth, the real GDP figure still stands and the true colours of the proponents, willing to cast aside all economic sense in pursuit of there dream, now stands out more brightly than any time previous to this.