The EU's Tobin Tax Estimates Way Down

A lot of hopes have been invested for decades now in the idea of a "Tobin tax."

The idea, first formulated by Yale University economist James Tobin in 1972, is that a government can tax short-term, round trip transactions from one currency to another. That is, speculators might transfer their US dollars into UK pounds and, shortly thereafter, their pounds back into US dollars. That would be done, and is done, as a way of profiting off expected changes in the relative value of the currencies concerned: it is betting.

Tobin's view was that such betting is destabilizing and it ought to be discouraged: thus the tax. Further, Tobin worked up this proposal soon after Nixon had destroyed the older Bretton Woods system. There was a great deal of concern over what would replace it, how the financial world was going to get along if every currency simply floats against any other, with no agreed up measuring/reference point.

The idea seemed to die a quiet death. It was resurrected in the 1990s, though, for a range of reasons quite different from those that led Tobin to it. Financial speculation was by this time seen as a sport of the ultra-rich, and taxation of such speculation by transaction (far beyond the limited space of foreign exchange) was seen as a Robin Hood-esque way of raising money, which could then be dedicated to a variety of good causes.

The European Union has given it a try. France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece all have Tobin taxes, or "financial transaction taxes" in place, and the EU as a whole has a proposal under consideration. If Brexit proceeds, then of course London, that great global center of financial transactions, would be taking itself out of reach of any EU FTT.

Recent headlines in 2019 indicate that it seems to be dawning on would-be Robin Hoods as the 21st century nears the 1/5th point that the FTT as proposed won't really take in a lot of money.

But that's always a Big Question, isn't it? Do they WANT it to bring in money or do they want it to change behavior? Governments tax smoking BOTH to discourage smoking and to get revenue. This leads to a situation in which they talk a big game about how they'd like to "make smoking history," but ... they really don't. Because they come to see the income as a good in itself.

Likewise, if you wanted to eliminate targeted forms of speculation, (Tobin's original idea) jand you succeeded in doing so then you (the Eurocrats) wouldn't make any money off of taxing them (sorry, Robin).

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