Financial Lobby in Revolt: How Much Longer Can Transaction Tax Be Delayed?

... lenders have already long since adjusted to the idea that their transactions in the financial markets will be taxed in the future. At the very latest, financial institutions came to understand that the unwanted tax would come, in one form or other, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy had a related law ratified in the French parliament within the course of just a few weeks and Chancellor Angela Merkel also voiced her support for a transaction tax. The only question is in what form it will come.

And for the risks/unintended consequences:

... one must look no further than the meager successes of the British stock exchange tax, which only applies to share transactions, which constitute a tiny portion of all financial transactions. Since the introduction of the "Stamp Duty Reserve Tax" of 0.5 percent on the sale price in 1986, many share transactions are no longer being handled on the exchange. Instead, they are traded directly between two parties in the form of a so-called Contract for Difference (CFD).

These CFDs precisely reflect the changes in the price of a stock, but they are not subject to any stock exchange tax. Ironically, a tax is now ensuring that backroom deals are flourishing while the underlying securities are no longer being publicly traded on the exchange.