FACTBOX: Options for a global levy on banks

(Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund is studying options for a global levy on banks, which would help to pay for recent and future financial sector bailouts.

The IMF is due to report results of the study in April to governments of the Group of 20 nations, which would make any decision to impose a levy.

Here are options which the IMF is exploring, along with ideas for bank levies being suggested in the U.S. Congress.

WINDFALL TAX

IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has raised the idea of a one-off tax on bank earnings. He called it a "possible windfall tax for 2009, a one-shot thing."

The IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard said a windfall tax might be levied on banks' assets rather than on profits.

Bank earnings in many countries have been recovering strongly from the global crisis, which might make a windfall tax feasible.

But governments may still feel the outlook for the financial sector and the economic recovery is too uncertain to impose a large windfall tax, especially since the tax could end up diverting banks' money away from lending to corporations, hurting employment.

FINANCIAL TRADING TAX

Blanchard told Reuters that the IMF was studying the technical feasibility of a tax on banks' financial transactions, also known as a "Tobin tax."

However, Strauss-Kahn said in a Reuters interview that the IMF was not putting together a proposal for such a tax because it would risk being unworkable. This may indicate divisions within the IMF over the controversial idea, which could hurt business in financial centers such as London and New York.

A financial trading tax could be as low as 0.005 percent per trade, G20 sources told Reuters.

But many bankers think a trading tax is unlikely to go ahead because of opposition from the U.S. government. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said: "A day-by-day financial transaction tax is not something we are prepared to support."

Several proposals have been raised in the U.S. House of Representatives for a form of Tobin tax that would be imposed within the country, but they have not so far won strong support from tax-writing legislators, and may face an even tougher time in the Senate, where consensus is harder to achieve.

Representative John Larson, the No. 4 Democrat in the House, has proposed a 0.25 percent tax on over-the-counter derivatives transactions, but his measure has drawn no co-sponsors since it was introduced in July.

Representatives Peter DeFazio and Ed Perlmutter are floating a bill that would tax stock trades at 0.25 percent, options at the rate of the underlying asset, and futures transactions, swaps and credit default swaps at 0.02 percent. It would exempt the first $100,000 of trades each year.

An estimated $150 billion raised per year would go to reducing the deficit and job-creating measures such as road construction. The congressmen aim to introduce the bill in coming weeks, aides said.

INSURANCE LEVY

The IMF is also studying levying some form of mandatory insurance fee on banks; the money could be used to build up a fund that would conduct future bank rescues, relieving taxpayers of the burden.

An insurance levy could resemble the bank deposit insurance system already operating in the United States, where banks are assessed premiums that pay for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp to guarantee the safety of deposits in member banks.

Many bankers think the insurance levy option is the most likely to be adopted, partly because it could be differentiated, with riskier investment banks paying the levy at higher rates than conservative, retail-focused banks.

It would be difficult to introduce the levy, though; the fee would have to be applied in the same way across countries, to avoid giving the financial industry of a particular country an unfair competitive advantage.

And the existence of an insurance fund might end up creating "moral hazard," a sense among bank managements and investors that they could take excessive risks because banks would be bailed out if needed. Expectations that banks would be bailed out by governments may have been one reason for the risk-taking that led to the recent financial crisis.

(Compiled by Andrew Torchia)