I traded some Italian ADRs just to test (thtough IB). IB charged me with FTT. So it seems like IB accepts this tax without any hesitation. What are the leislation about this? I know there is tax cooperation for VAT and sales tax, but...
IB is a global company. If they were only based in the US they could ignore the tax and then the italians would have to go to a US court to get the ftt they reckon is due on ADR transactions. But i guess IB want to do business in italy, have italian customers and offer trading in italian stocks. So they have to be keep the french and italian authorities happy. The only alternative would be to prevent trading in french and italian ADRs completely.
Good point. Brokers with an international presence are caught between a rock and a hard place. This issue of extraterritoriality needs to be addressed at government level, perhaps G20, though I doubt there would be much urgency involved. The constituency is too small to motivate politicians.
Let's watch the daily traded volume as of monday. I don't think we need to wait for some quarterly exchange report to see what happens.
(google translation) Bielefeld (ots) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) has warned against exaggerated expectations of the proposed financial transaction tax. He also criticized his predecessor, the SPD Chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück. On the question of whether the project fail, Schaeuble said in Interview with the Bielefeld "Westfalen-Blatt" (Thursday): "No, but I've always said: As easy as it is now in the campaign describes SPD Chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück, it is not He would incidentally know as a former finance minister yet.. We can tax legislation in Europe make a unanimous and plus there is on this issue for the foreseeable future among the 28 Member States do not stand a chance. That is why we have agreed to go ahead with some other states, but even that is complicated enough. We now have brought with eleven Member States greater cooperation on the way. I've never heard of those who have said that we created overnight. I leave that to people who no longer are judged in four weeks, what they said again. " http://www.presseportal.de/pm/66306...sche-beurteilung-der-finanztransaktionssteuer
Italy introduced a levy on high-frequency and equity derivative trades on Monday, the second stage of a process... The new levy will subject high-frequency trading (HFT) to a 0.02 percent tax on trades occurring every 0.5 seconds or faster. http://forexblog.oanda.com/20130902/italy-first-of-many-to-tax-high-frequency-traders/
The Italian levy looked pretty reasonable to me until I noticed this "little detail" -- from the FT article: To me, this looks like a hole big enough to drive a truck through -- provided you're a big, well-connected firm. My guess is that any FTT/'HFT tax' that ever makes it to the US will look similar, unfortunately.
"It would be premature to declare the financial transaction tax dead, but at the moment there are more questions than answers." http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/i...est.b02c05b4-27fd-4613-a788-488142e2e548.html (in german)