Dutch claim a Europe Tobin Tax is unlikely
A POSSIBLE European financial transaction tax would be limited in scope and could only apply to buyers of stocks, similar to a British stamp duty, a Dutch paper reported yesterday, citing unnamed diplomats.
European finance ministers will tomorrow officially scrap a financial transaction tax, which would have applied to all financial transactions and to both buyers and sellers, Dutch daily Het Financieele Dagblad reported.
Only weak variants of a transaction tax, including a stamp duty on stocks, were still under consideration, the paper said.
A stamp duty in Europe would apply to buyers of stocks, and be presented as a first step to taxation of other financial transactions, the paper said.
Britain’s government remains opposed to a European-wide financial transaction tax and has long maintained that it would block any move by the European Union to introduce such a levy.