ABSTRACT
The 2008 financial crisis also triggered a debate about new taxes on the financial sector in the United States, including proposals for a financial transaction tax (FTT), a tax on bonuses, and taxes on financial institutions. Since the 1980s, each time a financial crisis hit, interest in a tax on financial transactions resurfaced in the United States and died out again shortly afterwards. Compared with the pre-crisis situation, the post-crisis context for regulatory reform was much less conducive to industry influence and much more permeable for diffuse interest groups agitating for change. In this post-crisis context, political opportunities had started to open up, with the number of policy-makers receptive to reform ideas increasing in the context of somewhat heightened issue salience, not least due to the attention that the Occupy Wall Street protests had attracted. Advocacy groups reached out to Congress starting in mid-2009 to identify supportive political actors.
