Taxation of Global Trading of Financial Instruments

Technological change and financial deregulation have dramatically globalised financial markets. Financial firms have developed innovative financial instruments, such as swaps and derivatives, to meet the often different global demand of investors and borrowers and have organised themselves to sell such global financial products 24 hours a day. This phenomenon of global trading challenges tax payers and tax administrations to come up with a fair way of allocating and taxing the profits in each country where global trading is carried on. This publication thoroughly reviews the factual background to global trading, analyses the challenges posed to traditional taxation methods and discusses a range of policy options to tackle the problems. Although the paper discusses a specific industry sector, many of the issues raised, for example the high level of global integration of functions and intensive co-operation between different geographic locations, are becoming more common in other industries with the spread of globalisation and the communications revolution.