City [UK] regulator seeks to deflate financial sector with global tax

[acsmith]

Source: FT

The head of Britain’s City watchdog supports the idea of new global taxes on financial transactions, warning that a “swollen” financial sector paying excessive salaries has grown too big for society.

Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, says the debate on bankers’ bonuses has become a “populist diversion” and that more drastic measures may be needed to cut the financial sector down to size.

Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/08943b5a-926a-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F08943b5a-926a-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fhome%2Fus

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Does paying global taxes count as taxation without representation?

[MasonJar]

1. Great idea!

[drm604]

2. Taxation without representation.

As I understand it, this would be a tax on corporations, not people. Corporations aren't supposed to have representation anyway, so I don't think that this would violate the spirit of "taxation without representation".

[Igel]

5. Don't think so.

Corporations can do without representation because they're already represented: They're collectives of shareholders, all of whom are, presumably already represenetd.

They have their money in one pot to do things they couldn't do individually. Profits from the corporation to into the pot: If it's paid out as dividends, then the money's not taxed at the corporate level but at the individual level; if it's kept in the pot then it's taxed as corporate income, and used for paying salaries or kept for reinvesting later (odd, that we never consider monies paid to corporate employees "investment", at least in the public press).

Tax a corporation, and you're indirectly (not all that indirectly, in many cases) taxing the wealth that sharedholders didn't receive and reinvest. The same could be accomplished by forcing all the profits to be paid out and then having the shareholders reinvest (at which point they'd be taxed for dividends, but the corporation would pay no taxes).

Further questions are: What legislative body -- presumably elected to represent the people, some of whom are shareholders -- would institute the tax? Would it be based on purchasing power parity, or would everything be converted to a common currency and then taxed according to a fixed schedule? What legislative body would apportion the revenues, and on what basis -- would they try to return it to where it originated, a principle heard often enough, or would they consider it something ripe for redistribution, so that those less well off get money?. What legislative body would have oversight over collection and distribution, and what checks and balances would there be?

And could the person proposing the idea, however vaguely, have some reason in mind that isn't politic to say?

[Lucky Luciano]

3. This will never fly, nt

[caseymoz]

4. Yes, an idea about fifty years ahead of its time. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. A global transactrion tax is no more "taxation without representation" than import duties are

which, ironically, is how the newly independant States mainly financed their government at first.