Talk of windfall tax on UK banking bonuses
With many US and UK banks set to release hundreds of millions of dollars for employee bonus schemes, it looks as though both US and UK regulators could step in and consider a windfall tax on excessive bonus payments. The UK government has for one been very proactive in this particular field and the word in the city is that the Treasury is already looking at the situation to see what can be done. In practice it is highly unlikely the government will be able to target a particular sector at a particular time and could be deemed to have a conflict-of-interest bearing in mind the large share stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds bank.
There is a feeling that the government is using the potential of a windfall tax as a way to force UK banks to reduce bonus payments, at least in the short term, while public opinion is very much against the sector profiting from significant taxpayer investment. When you consider the billions upon billions of pounds which have been poured into the UK banking sector and direct share stakes in the likes of Lloyds bank and Royal Bank of Scotland, surely UK taxpayers have a right to assume that bankers themselves will take some of the "pain", at least in the short term?
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