A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is again being widely discussed as a radical policy to tackle inequality and provide us all with a new level of freedom in an uncertain future. I will leave aside the moral arguments in favour and against for this article and instead look solely at how we could pay for a UBI at a meaningful level using a new micro-tax on all electronic transactions.
Preceding the 2016 Swiss referendum on introducing a UBI BIEN-CH the non-profit organisation behind the vote proposed introducing a micro-tax on all of Switzerland’s electronic transactions. This would be levied on financial institutions like the Tobin-Tax, but crucially it would also include all electronic transactions made by everyone in the country. A sort of Super Tobin-Tax that the University of Zurich estimated when applied at a rate of 0.2% would generate 200 billion Swiss francs, more than enough to pay for a UBI in the country.
It is quite difficult to find complete data on the true value of electronic transactions in the UK, but looking at the most reliable data available, the potential taxable amounts are mammoth.
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