Rather, the motivations behind the Swiss initiative are about efficiency and progress: unlike elsewhere, it’s not about bringing in a new tax, he says, it’s about “getting rid of three taxes” and updating the entire taxation system for the modern digital age. The initiative is unaffiliated with any political party.Ĭhesney reckons that at the European level, the noise around financial transaction taxes is mainly “communications”.Ĭhesney is Head of the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich. In its basic principles, the initiative is different to what’s talked about at the EU level, which is more focussed on taxing financial transactions on share purchases it’s also different to the much-heard “Tobin Tax” idea, which was centred on currency speculation, says Marc Chesney from the University of Zurich.Ĭhesney, a professor of quantitative finance, is one of the instigators of the people’s initiative along with a diverse committee with finance, politics, and other backgrounds. The microtax also wants to supersede and abolish three existing taxes: the value added tax, stamp duty, and the federal income tax (in Switzerland, federal levies make up a minor amount paid by taxpayers each year most income tax is taken by cantons.) If implemented, all such transactions would be taxed at 0.005% during the first year, a rate that would later rise to around 0.1%. The “microtax” people’s initiative wants to introduce a levy on all online electronic transactions, whether buying a coffee with a debit card, paying an employee’s salary, or trading billions of francs on financial markets. In Switzerland, an initiative is now proposing something both more limited (in that it only affects one country) and more expansive (it amounts to a radical overhaul of the taxation system). This content was published on Apr 23, 2018A controversial proposal for a sweeping reform of Switzerland's monetary system will be put to a nationwide vote on June 10. Sovereign money: the answer to financial crises? Current EU plans also only have the backing of a group of ten member states, less than half of the countries in the bloc. France and Italy, for example, levy high-frequency trading Switzerland charges a transfer tax on the trading of equities and bonds, when one of the parties is a Swiss securities dealer.Īt the European Union level, too, the idea lives on: the latest seven-year EU budget, a €1.8 trillion (CHF1.94 trillion) package agreed last month, mentions a possible financial transaction tax as part of a “roadmap” for new funding sources.īut it “lives on” tenuously: the Commission will propose something by 2024, the roadmap says – well over a decade after it was first proposed. Some countries do operate taxes on certain types of financial taxes. Since the “Tobin tax” on currency speculation was proposed in the 1970s, calls for taxes on financial transactions more generally have been heard, especially from anti-globalisation movements, but have rarely had a huge impact.
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