A European financial transaction tax is unlikely to raise the sums of money projected, says the finance minister of Sweden, which abandoned its tax.

First, banks are likely to pass on the burden of this tax almost completely to their customers through higher bank interest margins and bank fees. This makes the Financial Activities Tax a tax on bank customers rather than on bank shareholders. Since the Financial Transactions Tax (ie, Tobin, or Robin Hood) also falls on customers,

A year or so ago we only had to utter the words "new car" for a hundred financial institutions to be fighting for the right to lend us the money to buy an internal combustion engine in a shiny shell. They all had lots of money available for us to use, now they have none. Today I ask: where has all the money gone? If we scan the various prophecies of doom about the financial world we learn that ban...

Let’s have a financial transfer tax on sums that move through CHAPS. This tax has everything going for it. Note: I advise the TUC on tax matters The proposal is here: A transaction tax of 0.05 per cent would have raised £37 billion in 2008, but would only impose a very modest charge on each individual transfer. A tax

The government is still pushing for a global tax on financial transactions despite the scepticism that greeted the idea when Gordon Brown first raised it in the autumn

Financial support for this work from the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is gratefully acknowledged. Richard now gets grant money to read aloud his “reports” on YouTube? Blimey.

The UK has failed to join a new international crackdown on financial secrecy and tax havens by more than 50 countries, including Germany, France and Spain - part of a package of measures to restore the world's economy to health. Failure to participate in the formation of the new Taskforce on Financial Integrity and Economic Development, launched in Washington DC this week, is part of a patter...

The only real beneficiaries of this rescue will be those working in the financial markets. They have spent the past decade stuffing our savings up their noses while telling us they were invested. Now their friends in government have come up with a scheme to use our tax money to pay next year's bonuses.

contribution by Sargon Nissan As you’ve probably already seen, yesterday saw the launch of a major campaign to introduce a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions by a host of organisations working on issues of global and domestic poverty, international economic reform and social justice. The Robin Hood tax would impose a very small fee for every financial transaction between financial inst...

The European Commission formally proposes levying a financial transaction tax on all EU member states.