Editing Tobin tax (section)

===Is the tax easy to avoid===

====Technical feasibility====
Although Tobin had said his own tax idea was unfeasible in practice, [[Joseph Stiglitz]], former Senior Vice President and [[World Bank Chief Economist|Chief Economist]] of the [[World Bank]], said, on October 5, 2009, that modern technology meant that was no longer the case. Stiglitz said, the tax is "much more feasible today" than a few decades ago, when Tobin recanted.<ref name="Edmund Conway">{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/6262242/Joseph-Stiglitz-calls-for-Tobin-tax-on-all-financial-trading-transactions.html|title=Joseph Stiglitz calls for Tobin tax on all financial trading transactions|author=Edmund Conway|date=5 Oct 2009|access-date=17 March 2010|publisher=[[Telegraph Media Group]]|location=London|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100218160103/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/6262242/Joseph-Stiglitz-calls-for-Tobin-tax-on-all-financial-trading-transactions.html|archive-date=18 February 2010|url-status=dead}}</ref>

However, on November 7, 2009, at the [[G20]] finance ministers summit in Scotland, [[Dominique Strauss-Khan]], head of the [[International Monetary Fund]], said "transactions are very difficult to measure and so it's very easy to avoid a transaction tax."<ref name="Lukewarm"/>

Nevertheless, in early December 2009, economist [[Stephany Griffith-Jones]] agreed that the "greater centralisation and automisation of the exchanges and banks clearing and settlements systems ... makes avoidance of payment more difficult and less desirable."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/dec/07/tobin-tax-climate-change-investment|title=Now let's tax transactions|author=Stephany Griffith-Jones|date=December 7, 2009|work=The Guardian|access-date=2010-01-13|location=London|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130908180023/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/dec/07/tobin-tax-climate-change-investment|archive-date=September 8, 2013|url-status=live}}</ref>

In January 2010, feasibility of the tax was supported and clarified by researcher Rodney Schmidt, who noted "it is technically easy to collect a financial tax from exchanges ... transactions taxes can be collected by the central counterparty at the point of the trade, or automatically in the clearing or settlement process."<ref name="Schmidt Feasibility">{{cite web|url=http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/consult/2009/pdf/Comment84.pdf|title=Notes on the Feasibility and Impact of a General Financial Transactions Tax; Civil society consultation with the IMF on 28 January 2010|author=Rodney Schmidt, Principal Researcher, [[The North-South Institute]], Ottawa|date=28 January 2010|publisher=[[International Monetary Fund]]|access-date=24 June 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111102011155/http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/consult/2009/pdf/Comment84.pdf|archive-date=2 November 2011|url-status=live}}</ref> (All large-value financial transactions go through three steps. First dealers agree to a trade; then the dealers' banks match the two sides of the trade through an electronic central clearing system; and finally, the two individual financial instruments are transferred simultaneously to a central settlement system. Thus a tax can be collected at the few places where all trades are ultimately cleared or settled.)<ref name="Schmidt Feasibility"/>

Based on digital technology, a new form of taxation, levied on bank transactions, was successfully used in Brazil from 1993 to 2007 and proved to be evasion-proof, more efficient and less costly than orthodox tax models. In his book, ''Bank transactions: pathway to the single tax ideal'', Marcos Cintra carries out a qualitative and quantitative in-depth comparison of the efficiency, equity and compliance costs of a bank transactions tax relative to orthodox tax systems, and opens new perspectives for the use of modern banking technology in tax reform across the world.<ref name="pathway">{{cite journal|author=Marcos Cintra|date=July 2009|title=Bank transactions: pathway to the single tax ideal. A modern tax technology;the Brazilian experience with a bank transactions tax (1993-2007)|journal=Mpra Paper |url=https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/16710.html|publisher=University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 16710. [[Research Papers in Economics]]|access-date=28 June 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101024163802/http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/16710.html|archive-date=24 October 2010|url-status=live}}</ref>

{{See also|Currency transaction report|Money Laundering Control Act|Bank Secrecy Act|Suspicious activity report|Money laundering|Structuring|Electronic trading}}

====How many nations are needed to make it feasible?====
In the year 2000, "eighty per cent of foreign-exchange trading [took] place in just seven cities. Agreement [to implement the tax] by [just three cities,] London, New York and Tokyo alone, would capture 58 per cent of speculative trading."<ref name="Round" />