The Robin Hood Tax

I've been thnking about this for a while now not sure (a) whether it can work and (b) whether the 'bankers' will just find a way round it. But following George Osbourne's so-called emergency budget which has done nothing at all to correct the  money-grubbing activities of the 'bankers', but has instead pushed the onus of correcting the fiscal deficit onto those who had nothing to do with creating it, I reckon now we've got to do something and, at least, let the buggers know we're on to them.

The idea behind the campaign for The Robin Hood Tax is that every time the investment banks and financial markets make a transaction then a small percentage, say 0.05%, should be paid in tax, half the proceeds going to the Government of the country where the transaction takes place and half going to a global fund to ameliorate climate change and/or global poverty. Given the number and size of transactions that take place in the world's financial markets, it wouldn't take long to raise loadsamoney. This is a tax on activity relating to turnover rather than profits so it wouldn't affect dividends on long-term investments e.g. pension funds.

The average daily turnover in the foreign exchange markets is over $3 trillion; that's 3 X 10¹² US dollars. Not every dollar would be taxed, just every transaction, but that's still a lot of moolah to help ease the fiscal deficit the 'bankers' have lumbered us with. And then maybe it wouldn't be necessary to increase VAT to 20%, cancel school building projects, or make a million public sector workers unemployed.

So get on over to The Robin Hood Tax and sign up!