Bailout

The bank tax emerges

By Felix Salmon

Jackie Calmes has the broad outlines of the new bank tax, and I like the way it looks: essentially, it’s a 0.15% tax on bank liabilities excluding deposits (which already come with an FDIC fee attached). It would be paid by roughly 50 firms, including GE Capital, and would raise something on the order of $90 billion over 10 years. That’s an average of $180 million per firm per year, which seems eminently affordable to me.

US subsidiaries of foreign banks like HSBC and Deutsche Bank will be taxed; it’s unclear whether foreign subsidiaries of US banks will be as well. The aim of the tax is to ensure that the entire TARP fund gets repaid in full — not just the money lent to the banks directly, but also the money lent to the banks indirectly, through the AIG bailout. The tax is not, however, designed to repay the cost of rescuing Fannie and Freddie.

I like the way the tax is structured: it’s simple, and the liabilities-minus-deposits formula naturally puts more of the onus on investment banks than commercial banks. It also encourages banks to fund themselves with equity rather than debt.

Will the fee be passed on to bank customers? Well, it doesn’t apply to deposits, so retail banking customers shouldn’t be affected, but you never know. If they are, at the margin that might be no bad thing, if it encourages bank customers to move their money to small-enough-to-fail banks and credit unions.

Critics of the tax are certain to focus in on the rhetoric surrounding the announcement, and to denounce it as politically-motivated populism. Which might even be true. But just because a policy is popular doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea. And this one makes a lot of sense.

Full post as published by Macroprudential on January 14, 2010 (boomark / email).