Innovation with Impact: Financing 21st Century Development

The Gates Foundation, November 2011

In his report to the G20 in Cannes (November 2011) on new sources of finance for development Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, shows his support for a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT).

It explains that FTTs already exist in many countries and generate significant revenue – showing that they are indeed techincially feasible. If implemented on a G20 wide basis, the reports argues that an FTT coould generate about $48 billion annually.

Using France as a case study, this report develops a guide to implementing a domestic, unilateral tax on financial transactions. It recommends implementing an FTT design similar to the UK Stamp Duty, and applying it to bonds and derivatives transactions. At low rates, such a tax is estimated to generate over 12 billion euros annually in a country like France. Like similar FTTs in other countries, the FTT proposed here is unlikely to have a significant negative impact on the domestic financial markets of the countries who implement it.

Please download the Innovation with Impact: Financing 21st Century Development document as a pdf (1.8MB).