Press watch: financial transaction tax

Financial transaction tax: ‘This is a bad day’ for supporters of Europe’s proposed financial transaction tax, reports the Financial Times Brussels Blog. Although the EU legal opinion, which concluded that the FTT is ‘discriminatory, overreaches national jurisdiction and infringes the EU treaties’, is non-binding, it provides an ‘unusually clear, blunt and damning’ assessment, and it is in sharp contrast with most Council service opinions that are ‘a model of equivocation’. The blog notes that the politics were ‘already moving against the more ambitious models for a Eurozone FTT’ and the opinion ‘may well be the death-knell for the so-called “residence principle”.’ This gives a boost to those countries that are ‘happier to see a stamp duty style tax’. All things considered, this is ‘a big win for the UK, which has long been making the case that the FTT is illegal and extraterritorial’.