Reforming the Taxation of Derivatives – An Overview

This brief essay outlines three benchmarks for evaluating alternative ways of taxing capital income, summarizes anticipatory, retroactive, and accrual based proposals for reforming the taxation of derivatives, and offers guidelines for evaluating more limited reforms. It is intended as an introduction to key concepts, tensions, and ideas for reforming the taxation of financial instruments. Derivatives (or financial instruments) are challenging-challenging to understand, challenging to price, and, most importantly for the…