'Windfall tax for City bonuses' says GLA
City bonuses should be subject to a levy which would be funneled into the Olympic coffers says London body
The Greater London Authority (GLA)
has called for city bonuses to be hit with a windfall tax as executive rewards
surge, and the City is hailed as the world’s leading financial centre.
Employees at Goldman Sachs are set to cash in on an average Christmas bonus
of £319,000 each in January 2007, experts predicted. More than 4,000 City of
London staff at the US bank are expected to receive £1m each after the bank
revealed it would pay out a massive £8.3bn in salaries, bonuses and other
financial incentives.
GLA member Murad Qureshi said: ‘I think the fat cat city bosses are giving
Ebenezer Scrooge a bad name. The levels of bonuses are going into the billions
which sounds quite extraordinary, whilst we hear the
Goldman Sachs’s of the world are
giving the cleaners a very hard time who just want a minimum wage.
‘At the moment, as we all know, the Olympic finances are under a lot of
scrutiny. I think there may be a case for a windfall tax to help pay for that
additional cost on the building and facilities. We should remind ourselves that
we’ve had this before, when New Labour came into power in 1997. We had a
windfall tax aimed at the private utilities like
British Telecom and British Gas who were
actually exploiting their monopoly position.’
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