Financing for Development and Tobin Tax Reports and Analysis
Section Articles
Taxing Currency Transactions - From Feasibility to Implementation (October 2001)
Between Oct 4 - 6, 2001, Halifax Initiative hosted a conference "Taxing Currency Transactions - From Feasibility to Implementation" which attracted sixty participants from eighteen countries including: Belgium, Benin, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. The progamme included an evening public forum on Oct 4th attended by over 110 people and the two-day conference. Conference Papers - Vancouver, October 4-6, 2001
Currency Transactions Tax Implementation - A Proposed Model (September 2001)
Currency Transactions Tax Implementation - A Proposed Model (Robin Round - Halifax Initiative)
Submission to UN Financing for Development (January 2001)
One of the newest and most innovative methods to generate new resources for development involves the regulation and taxation of international capital flows. This paper talks about how currency transactions taxes, adopted nationally and coordinated regionally or internationally, provide a means by which unstable and untaxed capital can be re-regulated in the interest of financial stability and revenue generation for development.
Is the Tobin Tax Practicable? (June 2000)
The proposed Tobin tax is a percentage of the quantity of domestic currency converted into foreign currency. It would be collected on all such conversions of domestic currency, and would be treated by participants in the foreign-exchange market as an added cost to each foreign-exchange transaction. The tax cost would be equivalent to the payment processing costs which, though very small, are currently paid on each foreign-exchange transaction (June 2000).
Paper on the Feasibility of a Foreign Exchange Transactions Tax (March 1999)
There is virtually no formal infrastructure for trading foreign exchange. Traders in major banks around the world communicate directly with each other or through a broker. By contrast, the infrastructure for settling foreign exchange trades is becoming increasingly formal, centralised and regulated. This is due to new technology subject to increasing returns to scale and to cooperation between trading and central banks to reduce and eliminate settlement risk.
An International Tax on Foreign Currency Exchange (June 1998)
In 1978, James Tobin, a Nobel-Prize-winning economist, first proposed the idea of a tax on foreign exchange transactions that would be applied uniformly by all major countries. A small amount (less than 0.5%) would be levied on all foreign currency exchange transactions to deter speculation on currency fluctuation (June 1998).
