"[1] On 16 April 2010, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put forward three possible options to deal with the crisis, which were presented in response to an earlier request of the G20 leaders, at the September 2009 G20 Pittsburgh summit, for an investigative report on options to deal with the crisis.
[2] The IMF opted in favour of the "financial stability contribution" (FSC) option, which many media have referred to as a "bank tax".
[3] When the IMF presented its interim report[4][5] for the G20 on April 16, 2010, it set out three options, each of which is distinct from another: Financial stability contribution (FSC) – a tax on a financial institution's balance sheet (most probably on its liabilities or possibly on assets) whose proceeds would most likely be used to create an insurance fund to bail out the industry in any future crisis rather than making taxpayers pay for bailouts.
Initially it could be imposed at a flat rate and later it could be refined so that the institutions with the most risky portfolios would pay more than those who took on fewer risks.
In a communiqué issued after a two-day summit, the EU’s 27 national leaders stopped short of making a formal appeal for the introduction of a so-called "Tobin tax" but made clear they regarded it as a potentially useful revenue-raising instrument.
[12]) On June 27, 2010 at the 2010 G20 Toronto summit, the G20 leaders declared that a "global tax" was no longer "on the table," but that individual countries will be able to decide whether to implement a levy against financial institutions to recoup billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts.
EU leaders instructed their finance ministers in May 2010 to work out by the end of October 2010, details for the banking levy, but any financial transaction tax remains much more controversial.
To European OECD countries which implemented bank taxes belong Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
[16] In 2011 the bank tax was implemented in Austria and based on a measure of total liabilities net of equity and insured deposits.
However, while still in effect the Covid-19 pandemic stroke and policymakers in Slovakia were attempting to reduce bank taxes in order to provide more financial support to enterprises and public-sector investment programs.
In return for lenders' assistance in funding the country's economic recovery from the pandemic, the Slovak government approved the removal of a special tax on bank deposits.
[17] On August 30, 2009, British Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Adair Turner had said it was "ridiculous" to think he would propose a new tax on London and not the rest of the world.
[11] In a detailed analysis of the IMF's proposals, Stephan Schulmeister of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research finds that, "the assertion of the IMF paper, that [a financial-transactions tax] ‘is not focused on the core sources of financial instability,’ does not seem to have a solid foundation in the empirical evidence.
[2] In an alternative critique of the IMF's stance, Aldo Caliari of U.S. NGO the Center of Concern said, "the naiveté with which the IMF approaches its preferred mechanism — a bank tax tied to systemic risks — is astonishing for such a knowledgeable institution, unless it is in fact designed to let the financial sector off the hook.
"[19] He argues that the FAT and FSC do not reduce the overall risk in the system, and may increase it if banks are encouraged to feel that the taxes provide a government guarantee of future bailouts.
Nonetheless, a 2010 Tulane Law Review article lent lukewarm support to President Obama's Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee, which is a "bank tax" similar to the FSC.