France has recently implemented a financial transaction tax (FTT), and there is now a very real prospect of a ‘patchwork’ of further FTT regimes being introduced across Europe, Simon Leach writes.
This presents financial institutions with significant new challenges. What lessons can be learnt from the French experience?
On 1 August 2012 the new French FTT came into effect. In introducing the tax the French government chose to front-run the wider EU initiative and in the design of the regime has followed a model which more closely resembles UK SDRT than the model proposed by the EU Commission last year. Whilst Germany is still trying to adopt a more coordinated approach to the introduction of an FTT across EU Member States through the use of the enhanced co-operation procedure other...
