Tax this casino cash

THE government’s proposed benefit cuts are widely seen as extremely objectionable, since they would seriously hurt many already disadvantaged people in numerous ways. 

Cutting housing benefit, for instance, would almost inevitably result in large numbers of families (estimated as at least 4,000) being unable to pay their rent and so being threatened with eviction and the misery of homelessness.

Many people and organisations are considering how the government, requiring economies to pay off its huge debt of £8.3billion, could avoid cutting money and services to the most needy by increasing revenue sufficiently by other means, for example by changes in taxation such as the Robin Hood tax.

This tiny tax would be imposed on high frequency trading by the financial sector in the sale or purchase of shares. These transactions take place every few seconds, their volume amounting to 70 times that of the world economy.

Taxing them has been widely supported by economists, among them 115 charitable organisations, including Oxfam, Unicef, Barnardo’s and Save the Children, and also by 232,000 Facebook friends. 

Since thousands of such transactions are made every day, principally by the City, even a tiny tax on each transaction would raise an enormous sum, although the small percentage of tax – 0.005 per cent is  proposed – would be a very slight discouragement of this activity being carried out in London.

This portion of the financial sector has been described by Lord Turner, Financial Services Authority chairman, as “socially useless”. Such a financial transaction tax, a VAT-style levy on stocks, bonds, foreign currency and derivative transactions, has already been introduced by France, Germany and the UK. It was supported by many economists and by the International Monetary Fund, which remarked that it was “highly progressive”. 

In Britain, however, it was largely offset by a reduction in corporation tax, a stamp duty of 0.5 per cent on all share transactions.

The internet shows fuller details of the Robin Hood tax and its Innovation Day on July 23. Let us support this just demand to make most of the cuts unnecessary while taxing the City’s casino-type operations instead.
Angela Sinclair-Loutit
Highbury Hill, N5

Published: 15th July, 2011