British Prime Minister: Global tax worth looking at

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as he prepares for the G20 Summit, believes global taxation is worth looking at in order to reduce risky behavior by banks.

In 2001, France became the first developed nation to support the Tobin Tax, which is a tax on international transactions and named after American economist James Tobin. Tobin was the first to propose such a tax in the 1970s. Recently, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he will press for this international tax at the G20 Summit, according to the BBC. But experts believe establishing an agreement of such a tax is very unlikely. Now United Kingdom's Gordon Brown thinks it’s an idea worth looking at but, telling reporters before heading to the United Nations General Assembly, there needs to be global cooperation, according to AFP. "The first thing is to have the global coordination to involve every major country and we are not there yet. The second thing is to deal with tax havens. If one jurisdiction can fail to implement a proposal such as this it makes it difficult for other jurisdictions to follow. So I think what you will see this week and particularly next week is action against tax havens that are non-cooperative around the world," states Brown who will be attending the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this week. However, in 2002 then-Chancellor Gordon Brown immediately dismissed the Tobin Tax plan as a "big problem" for foreign exchange transactions and, according to The Guardian, that they should not be penalised. Majority of economic analysts believe most industrialized nations would oppose such a tax due to fear that it might seriously harm their financial institutions.