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Snape, John --- "Tax and the City: The UK’s Proposals for a Bank Levy" [2011] ELECD 492; in LaBrosse, Raymond John; Olivares-Caminal, Rodrigo; Singh, Dalvinder (eds), "Managing Risk in the Financial System" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Managing Risk in the Financial System

Editor(s): LaBrosse, Raymond John; Olivares-Caminal, Rodrigo; Singh, Dalvinder

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857933812

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Tax and the City: The UK’s Proposals for a Bank Levy

Author(s): Snape, John

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

7. Tax and the city: the UK's
proposals for a bank levy
John Snape1

7.1. INTRODUCTION

The issue of whether there exists some public interest, beyond the `natural'
operation of the markets, is the central ideological question in a world
where the future shape of neoliberal society is gravely in doubt. Nowhere,
perhaps, has this proposition been more vividly illustrated than in the
debate about how governments, whether acting together or unilater-
ally, should legislate for the reform of financial markets. Questions have
centred, to a large extent, on the vexed issue of whether a special levy
should be imposed on banks, one which would reflect the systemic risks
that the financial services sector presents to the developed economies of
the world.2 Imposing such a levy is not, of course, the only possibility for
the greater regulation of the banks, as the various contributions to this
volume demonstrate. Discussion of the merits of a bank levy has weaved
itself inextricably around the other, related yet distinct, questions, which
have long preoccupied analysis of the deliberations of both the European
Commission and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.3 Pre-
eminent among these, of course, is the issue of how to strengthen banks'
`buffers' of capital and liquidity, each of which gives rise to problems
themselves shaped and prioritized by the feasibility of a bank levy.
Regardless of the shape a bank levy might ultimately take, the nature and
quality of the arguments, both for and against it, ...