Brussels, 15/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - The Austrian finance minister, Hans Jörg Schelling, would like to set at between €15 and €20 billion the target revenue to be expected from the future financial transactions tax (FTT).
In a letter recently sent to his colleagues, of which EUROPE has had sight, Schelling, who chairs the meetings on the FTT at ministerial level, argues that the future tax should raise sufficient revenue to make it worth the effort. “However, so far meetings mainly focused on exemptions. By nature they equally reduce revenues and increase the administrative burden”, he writes, stating that these exemptions are no less a requirement. “In order to strike the right balance between revenues and administrative burden we should set a revenue target”, Schelling adds. The Commission, he explains, estimated that its original proposal would raise €34 billion for the group of Ten. He is therefore proposing a meeting of his peers on the sidelines of the Eurogroup or the Ecofin Council of March. However, the proposal is reported to have left some of its recipients somewhat confused. A source close to one delegation explained that an objective of this kind would make no sense and that the distribution key would also be a problem. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)