The Tobin tax is a tax on financial transactions, whether the sale of shares, currency transactions or financial derivatives, which was proposed with the purpose of avoiding speculative movements. The origin of this tax comes from 1971, when this rate, which receives the name of the Nobel Prize for Economics, James Tobin, was only intended to tax and control the speculative movements of foreign currency from a fiscalizing rather than a collection aspect.
It is a bad idea for obvious reasons. Imagine you impose high transaction cost on houses. Then people will keep living in wherever they started to live, even if they would be better of if the move e.g. closer to their workplace. The same logic applies fr financial transaction: market would become much less efficient.
Depende de contexto financiero y fiscal de cada país, en México están exentas del ISR las operaciones financieras cuando no se concentre mas del 10% de la totalidad de acciones que se encuentre en el mercado en un solo tenedor.
Esta medida según el fisco mexicano, tiene por objeto no concentrar la tenencia accionaria y dispersar los beneficios de la bolsas entre el público inversionista.
No obstante lo anterior, la Ley para la prevención de operaciones con recursos de procedencia ilícita, obliga a quienes participan en estos esquemas de mercado de valores a informar al gobierno sobre el origen de estos recursos.
México sigue siendo uno de los países de mayor captación de inversión extranjera del mundo, no obstante los rígidos y complicados esquemas fiscales que se tienen.
Depending on the financial and fiscal context of each country, financial operations are exempt from ISR in Mexico when no more than 10% of the total number of shares in the market is concentrated in a single holder. This measure, according to the Mexican state treasury, is intended not to concentrate the shareholding and to disperse the profits of the stock exchanges among the investing public. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Law for the prevention of operations with resources of illicit origin obliges those who participate in these securities market schemes to inform the government about the origin of these resources. Mexico continues to be one of the countries with the highest levels of foreign investment in the world, despite the rigid and complicated tax schemes that exist.
Competition between goods and services, labour and capital will always be won by capital, in case of free mobility of capital. Capital mobility with the speed of light through the global fiberglass network will always outperform the others. Putting a tax on capital transactions can help to redress this.
Under the Bretton Wood System no financial crises did occur, due to its capital restrictions. During the 70s-90's political decisions to liberalize capital flows did create the modern financial order. Its so called "efficient markets" dictate the global economy and frustrate many economic activities in developed or developing countries, important for society, but not according to the norm set by the financial markets. Those markets look only on short term profit and not on long term profitable production and trade.
This process of financialization - transforming the orientation of the economy from long term production and trade to finance, form long term profitability to short term financial profit - has permeated the global economy and is at the heart of the economic problems of our time.
It also shows there may be something wrong with our economic thinking?
Some literature:
- Alan Taylor (2012). The Great Leveraging. www.nber.org/papers/w18290.pdf
- Reinhart & Rogoff (2009).This Time is Different
- Eric Helleiner (1994). States and the Reemergence of Global Finance
Tax on financial transactions can have different impact on different countries according to their financial infrastructure, intensity of securities trading, the role of derivatives, etc. Slovakia was among the countries supporting this tax basically because the role of financial speculations has not been such important and there is no VAT on financial transactions. The introduction of this tax has been regarded as "faire" - of course provided other countries will introduce the tax as well, especially countries with which our country has intensive trade and financial relations. One aspect of a potential negative impact of this tax can be that the tax on financial transactions can be a further barrier to capital market development and Slovakia belongs to countries with underdeveloped capital market.
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