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Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

theguardian.com

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Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#141

Post by zmnd »

SeanLuke wrote: post #82
zmnd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is home to over 4,700 FDIC-insured banks. It’s not far off from the EU, which has 5,171, but stop and consider that the EU consists of 27 countries. The UK currently has 365 banks, and Canada has 83

The number of countries in the EU seems to be not the best argument, though their distribution might be. The USA has one bank for every 70617 people. The EU has one bank for every 86637 people. Italy is rather much more concentrated, having seen a huge decrease in unique banks over the last decade. It has one bank for every 134624 people.

I shared the whole quote, but the goal was to just highlight that the number of banks is fairly similar.

I agree that the number of people is a better characteristic in this context, however the number of countries is important. EU has many different cultures, languages, regulations, so they have to have more banks. But looking at data, despite these considerations, EU still has worse competition. So still not sure what exactly parent meant.

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#142

Post by prepend »

webdood90 wrote: post #40
madballster wrote: post #21

This is an old European disease. Corporate profits are often seen as an adverse result; of consumers being taken advantage of unfairly. Taxing excess profits beyond what are already high tax rates is popular amongst voters (e.g. see poll results in the UK, 2022). However, this lowers the appeal for new entrants to enter these markets to compete for these excess profits through better and more efficient products and s…

I didn't think it was possible but banking shills apparently exist > If one wants free enterprise and reap its benefits who wants this from banking??? > one has to allow high profits for companies and see if competition takes care of the "problem" ah, yes - we've seen this work so many times before!

> who wants this from banking???

I certainly do. I like have lots of choices and banking is important to me. I also like innovative new banking products. I wish there was free enterprise in banking, it seems like we have an oligopoly, in the US at least.

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#143

Post by zmnd »

fluoridation wrote: post #101
zmnd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is home to over 4,700 FDIC-insured banks. It’s not far off from the EU, which has 5,171, but stop and consider that the EU consists of 27 countries. The UK currently has 365 banks, and Canada has 83

How silly. Per million people the US has 14.1 banks, which is only slightly more than the EU's 11.5. I don't really know what's up with the UK and Canada, but there's probably some economic variable I'm not considering. Can you imagine if the number of banks per country was constant?

But it's still more (or at least fairly similar to me). Far from "old American disease of not ensuring competition".

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#144

Post by cykotic »

gruez wrote: post #137
cykotic wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't understand what the word suffer means. Those entities don't lose anything. It's not possible to lose something you don't have. In an alternate universe where the windfall tax did not occur those entities have more money. But in this universe they don't lose anything. They don't suffer. To call it a loss means that money was taken from them. If someone promises to leave me $1 million when they die an…

>I think you don't understand what the word suffer means. 1. You haven't heard of the saying "suffering a loss" in the context of finance? 2. see definition 3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suffer#Verb > Those entities don't lose anything. It's not possible to lose something you don't have. In an alternate universe where the windfall tax did not occur those entities have more money. But in this universe they don't l…

I made an edit to my comment above. It may explain more my position.

We live in a society and there aren winners/losers in a financial sense. But we all have to live together. That 10 people have as much wealth as 150 million people is obscene and immoral. Taxing such wealth to use for the betterment of us all is right, just, and sound policy. Obviously we disagree on this. I hope your view does not win out in the long run. It has won out in the U.S. in the present and the effects have been bad. Such is my view.

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#145

Post by dj_gitmo »

jntvjnvutnuvt wrote: post #97
Hamcha wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US: ISP & Healthcare

Most Americans have access to AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile. They also have a choice of insurance plans and healthcare providers.

> AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile.

These are mobile providers. For home internet with a physical connection you usually don't have a choice and it is not outlandish to consider them a "natural monopoly" like you would electricity and water.

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#146

Post by webdood90 »

bko wrote: post #67
webdood90 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think it was possible but banking shills apparently exist > If one wants free enterprise and reap its benefits who wants this from banking??? > one has to allow high profits for companies and see if competition takes care of the "problem" ah, yes - we've seen this work so many times before!

I don't know. I kind of like competition in banking. I like free checking, ATM fee reimbursement, better customer service, better websites and apps, better alerting etc. You get that through competition for my deposits.

all of those trivial improvements for the low price of half a trillion dollars in bailouts

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#147

Post by webdood90 »

prepend wrote: post #142
webdood90 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think it was possible but banking shills apparently exist > If one wants free enterprise and reap its benefits who wants this from banking??? > one has to allow high profits for companies and see if competition takes care of the "problem" ah, yes - we've seen this work so many times before!

> who wants this from banking??? I certainly do. I like have lots of choices and banking is important to me. I also like innovative new banking products. I wish there was free enterprise in banking, it seems like we have an oligopoly, in the US at least.

do you also enjoy bailouts?

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#148

Post by acyou »

scotty79 wrote: post #126
acyou wrote: post #96

Do we levy windfall taxes on farmers after a bumper crop harvest? No, because we assume the profits will be reinvested. How does a bank efficiently re-invest? Does taking profits mean efficient reinvestment? I dont think so. It just means inflation. Windfall taxes just grow the big government. More cost to be directly passed on to consumers at the end of the day. If we don't like capitalism, why not just say we want…

> How does a bank efficiently re-invest? Banks that have more money then they need for operation just indulge more in gambling.

Banks gambling in the form of credit made available to other businesses would be ideal. That's what makes everything keep ticking along. What we should be concerned about is profit taking and thereby exchanging working assets and capital for idle cash on hand.

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#149

Post by MikeDelta »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #139
gruez wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I dunno why only wage tax is progressively taxed. Companies are just groups of people. Why should a group of 100 people get taxed more than a group of 100,000 people? Progressive rates on wages make sense because it's applied to each person individually.

In an industry where "too big to fail" is a real thing, taxing bigger companies more seems perfectly reasonable. Not just a little bit - significantly more, even painfully more. Create some actual incentive for banks to not get that big.

Banks have been trying to reduce their balance sheets and their risk-weighted assets, because of all the extra charges and reserves they need to keep. They cannot just get rid of a large of their customers like that and collapsing shareprice.

In some businesses there is also a benefit in scale (like in trading), and there you see the US banks leading because they've had it.

If you want the US banks to fully take over IB and corporate banking, definitely do tax the EU banks painfully more.

Or tax every financial counterpart painfully more, so then eventually the customers pay much more for their loans because the financial system has become so expensive.

Re: Italy approves 40% windfall tax on banks for 2023 as profits soar

#150

Post by xboxnolifes »

jntvjnvutnuvt wrote: post #97
Hamcha wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US: ISP & Healthcare

Most Americans have access to AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile. They also have a choice of insurance plans and healthcare providers.

Most Americans have access to one "high-speed" (50Mbps+) provider, and then maybe one low-speed (<15MBps) provider, and maybe one dish option. It's not competition if the product isn't comparable.
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