Introduce banking turnover tax to fund future crisis?

[askalot]

Will NAMA work? Who knows but we can be certain that sometime in the future we will face another banking crisis and the prospect of the taxpayer having to foot the bill. So it makes sense to introduce a ring fenced turnover tax on banks to build up a bailout fund. If tax is too horrible a word we could call it an insurance premium paid to the state.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

The problem is that what we badly need now is profitable banks building up their reserves. Paying part of them in some new tax defeats the object of the exercize.

However, if NAMA costs the taxpayer a lot of money while the banks are roaring ahead, you can be quite sure that a banking levy will be introduced.

Brendan

 

[j26]

I picked this up on Wikipedia about the idea of a Tobin Tax (a small tax on all currency transactions). Apparently it's from the Financial Times

Adair Turner, chair of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority, in August 2009 in an interview for Prospect magazine supported the idea of new global taxes on financial transactions, warning that a “swollen” financial sector paying excessive salaries has grown too big for society. Lord Turner’s suggestion that a Tobin tax should be considered for financial transactions is also likely to reverberate around the world.[13]

There might be a tax on banking yet.