The Rbin Hood tax........is it a good idea?

The reason the government won't do it, apart from the fact that they can't under present legislation, is that the banks would move their commercial departments overseas. Then they won't even get the tax on profits that they get at the moment and there would be tens of thousands of job losses.

Sounds good but not very practical as this proposal is a tax on turnover. It seems more like a sketch that they would have on the Two Johns TV programme - which I love.

The commission the banks charge their commercial clients for big transactions used to be in multiples of sixteenth of a percent. I would guess that it is still similar.

It is these profits on commercial banking that already supports personal banking and the banks are already looking at going back to charging us for our current accounts.

Before anyone asks if I am a banker. No I'm not, I am retired hairdresser :hehe:.

 

Sorry Kandy, I don't speak Blonde. :( :hehe: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

 

Hi lollipop,

I'm just as angry as you about the complete and utter mess with regard to the bailout.

With regard to the banks, they wouldn't be pursuing a policy of tax avoidance. Their commercial banking can be done anywhere in the world. They only use our country because it has developed the market that is conducive to them. If it no longer becomes conducive then they will operate elsewhere.

The sort of banks that the video was referring to are mainly the ones that didn't make a complete and utter b**ls up of their business and produce good profits all the time. This country earns quite a bit of money from them and their employees.

Of course, instead of us trying to raise more tax we could move towards solving our problems by another method - reduce government spending. :hehe:

I can already see holes in what I am going to say next but it is just another way of looking at things.

We could do away with income tax and increase VAT to compensate. This would immediately get rid of thousands of government jobs. To increase the VAT rate would not require any more employees to administer it. Customs and Revenue have 90,000 employees. I don't know what proportion of them deal with income tax but let's say a third. This would save us billions of pounds a year.

Everyone would receive their pay without tax being deducted and would only pay tax on what they buy. Food and childrens' clothes could still be tax free although some people might want to have some VAT put on foods that are too high in salt, sugar and fat.

The high earners would be paying a lot more tax because they would be spending a lot and wouldn't be able to get away with their current tax loopholes.

Benefits would need to be adjusted for the lowest earners or those people who currently don't pay any tax.

I'm only thinking of these things as I go along. Of course, I haven't yet thought about what we do with the 30,000 unemployed tax people :hehe:.

Vote for shiney :thmb: