It is happening now. It is called grey economy or black market. Trading and speculation will always exist in one form or another. It will move off regulated exchanges or to physical goods and currencies. And maybe that is what they want - corruption and black market. They can steal more tax free.
Its far likely they want the powers a national goverment has over every country in the union, taxation being vital to that and finance is the walking wounded when it comes to public perception due to the mess the union its self created..easy prey as they say.
We need to explain that everyone with money in the markets is "speculating". Just because one trader's timeframe may be different than a long term investor's timeframe for each investment, as long as they both have money in the markets, they are both "speculating".
http://www.cityam.com/article/city-must-unite-european-allies-fight-financial-transaction-tax Back from vacations, I realize how good it is to spend time without reading this thread...But it's good to see even "public servants" are beginning to understand the unworkability of the current proposal. Remember they need everybody to agree in the end and they all want different things. There is still a long road to the final draft... Meanwhile every profitable trader I know in the EU-11 is planning his relocation( even people with family to take care of and years of profitable trading in their own country ). Everybody is fed up,most will eventually relocate even if it doesn't see the light in the end. Europe's growth is around -0.5%, US +1.5%, BRICs +5 % ( sorry I don't know real figures ) and they think they can unilaterally decide what tax the world needs to pay...Give me a break. It's just a final nail in the coffin.
http://www.politics.be/persmededelingen/35389/ [...]Belgian Finance Minister Koen Geens has said that he will be âcarefulâ in introducing the EUâs financial transaction tax because âBelgium has a lot of banks who are trading extensively in our own debtâ.
Europe investors attack transactions tax. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/411cb28c-b1aa-11e2-b324-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.mondaq.com/x/236758/Financial+Services/The+financial+transaction+tax+an+update Natural persons and trade associations can also seize the ECJ against the FTT (even against the project of directive ). That's exactly what they should do.
FTT challenge had to come 'sooner rather than later', says UK Treasury http://www.ipe.com/guest/ftt-challenge-had-to-come-sooner-than-later-says-uk-treasury_51943.php [...] Javid pointed out that the FTT proposal had not yet been finalised, and said the Treasury still hoped the tax's final version would differ "significantly" from what was currently being proposed. "At that point, we may not have the same concerns about the impact these proposals could have on UK businesses," he said. "But we decided to launch this action with the ECJ because we should show quite clearly our position on the FTT and that we want to preserve our position." [...]
CFTC Commissioner Proposes Derivatives Transaction Fee http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/05/01/cftc-commissioner-proposes-derivatives-transaction-fee/