Newsletter : April 2012

Europe steps up efforts to implement a Financial Transaction Tax

Dear Stamp Out Poverty Supporter

The campaign for a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) has had an encouraging few months as a group of European countries have been pushing ahead and could implement the tax as early as next year. Read more about the progress and our achievements in the article below.

We’ve also been busy with some exciting campaign activities. Whilst ordinary citizens are paying the costs of the financial crisis with cuts to public services and jobs, Barclays bank has continued to hand out excessive bonuses and remunerations to its top Executives. So last week we headed to the Barclays annual shareholder meeting to make our voice heard.

We also share our recent ‘FTT: Myth-Busting’ report. This really useful and informative paper addresses all common ‘myths’ about the tax and shows how an FTT would be good for economic growth and help generate thousands of jobs.

Enjoy!

The Stamp Out Poverty team

Nurses Vs Bankers at the Barclays annual meeting

New figures show that UK taxpayers effectively subsidise the pay of each and every investment banker at Barclays to the tune of £420,000 a year – an amount that could pay the annual salaries of 17 nurses.

Cameron and Osborne become more isolated opposing the FTT whilst Europe marches on

Since the European Commission (EC) tabled its draft legislation for an EU wide FTT in 2011, a group of 9 countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) have been pushing ahead and could implement an FTT as early as next year.

Financial Transaction Tax: Myth Busting

Stamp Out Poverty have created an extremely useful ‘FTT Myth-Busting’ paper which covers 12 common ‘myths’ concerning the impact of the FTT which continue to be peddled by our opponents. All of which can be shown to be false.