Today (20.3.13) in the UK, we had a statement from the Finance Minister, George Osborne (or in UK-parlance, a Budget statement was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer) where he said:

"I also want Britain to be the place where people raise money and invest.

Financial services are about much more than banking.

In places like Edinburgh and London, we have a world beating asset management industry.

But they are losing business to other places in Europe.

We act now with a package of measures to reverse this decline – and we will abolish the schedule 19 tax which is only payable by UK domiciled funds.

Many medium sized firms and start-ups use the Alternative Investment Market to raise funds to help them grow.

Many observers of the British tax system complain that it has long biased debt financing over equity investment.

So today I am abolishing altogether stamp duty on shares traded on growth markets such as AIM.

In parts of Europe they’re introducing a financial transaction tax.

Here in Britain we’re getting rid of one."

According to the Budget from April 2014 the UK will abolish schedule 19 charges and stop levying stamp duty on AIM shares. Our analysis is that, in revenue terms, this means a reduction in annual revenue of £145m in schedule 19 charges and £170m in AIM fees. A combined total annual reduction of £315m. HMRC has stamp duty at £2.794bn in 2011/12. The £315m stamp duty cut is equivalent to 11% of this annual revenue.

So rather than "getting rid" of the UK's FTT in shares, today amounts to reducing revenue from the tax by about 10%. This is of course a move in the wrong direction but to claim this is getting rid of the UK's FTT is simply not true.

Sources:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/receipts/info-analysis.pdf

http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget2013_complete.pdf (p64)