As part of sweeping spending cuts announced by Chancellor George Osborne, a new bank levy will be applied to British banks. Full details will be disclosed in the next few days, but the government expects to generate £2.5 billion (US$3.9 billion) a year.
Saying he wanted the banks to make a fair contribution, the Chancellor said that the new legislation would “extract the maximum sustainable tax revenues from financial services”.
“We neither want to let banks off making their fair contribution, nor do we want to drive them abroad,” said Osborne.
“Many hundreds of thousands of jobs across the whole United Kingdom depend on Britain being a competitive place for financial services,” he added.
Source: BBC News
