Originally published at Tax Justice Network
In the February 2017 Taxcast, our monthly podcast: how financial transaction taxes can protect us from finance sectors dragging our economies down. Plus: the Swiss referendum – taxpayers have refused to pick up the tab for corporate tax ‘reforms’. What does that mean for one of the world’s biggest tax haven players? Also, we discuss President Trump’s valentine gift for kleptocrats and the extractives industry as he repeals anti-corruption regulations – the criminal race to the bottom is on. And, the influence of dark money, the experts in distorting democratic debate and the results of the 2017 Transparify report.
Featuring: Professor Avinash Persaud, chair of Intelligence Capital and author of Improving Resilience, Increasing Revenue: the case for modernising the UK’s stamp duty on shares, David Hillman of the Robin Hood Tax Campaign and John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. Produced and presented by Naomi Fowler for the Tax Justice Network.
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I think they are more opposed to this [Financial Transactions Tax] than any other because this tax really drives a stake into the heart of the current business model… you can see how that is very frightening to them
Professor Avinash Persaud, Intelligence Capital
President Trump’s repeal of anti-corruption measures “has opened the field for a much wider variety of corrupt practices and one can well imagine the oil lobbies will now start concentrating on the European Union and they’ll be saying ‘we have to compete in this race to the bottom, otherwise we’ll be at a competitive disadvantage with the US companies.’ And that raises questions – what is that competitive disadvantage? Well, it’s the competitive disadvantage which stops us acting like criminals.”
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Another great episode. Thank you NC for sharing these podcasts.
Thank you for this clip. Particularly appreciated the link to Gerald Epstein’s paper on how much money the financial sector has and continues to siphon from our economy. Staggering sums. Far past time for policy measures to address this highly speculative system that leaves the American people with the fat tail of risk as speculative “gains” continue to be front-loaded into the pockets of a few. I fully support a financial transactions tax on derivatives. It’s difficult to imagine any material downside from such a tax.
WRT the other issues mentioned, it is becoming clearer by the day what this administration is about.