amount of liabilities net of insured deposits. The tax went into effect in 2011. Special cases Latvia The bank tax was implemented in Latvia in 2011 and was levied on a measure of assets with tax rate equal to 0.1%. However, Latvia's bank levy was abolished in 2020. Slovakia In 2012, the Slovak financial stability contribution, also known as the bank levy, was enacted in order to provide a protection against possible financial crises. By the end of 2020, the tax on bank liabilities after deducting basic capital was due to expire. Despite this, Slovak lawmakers voted in November 2019 to prolong the tax indefinitely and increase the rate from 0.2 percent to 0.4 percent. Both the National Slovak Bank and the European Central Bank criticized that plan. The central bank, in its financial stability report published in November 2019, forecasted that the higher tax would reduce bank income by 33%. Slovakia's bank levy was abolished in January 2021. However, while still in effect the Covid-19 pandemic stroke and policymakers in Slovakia were attempting to reduce bank taxes in order to provide more financial support to enterprises and public-sector investment programs. In return for lenders' assistance in funding the country's economic recovery from the pandemic, the Slovak government approved the removal of a special tax on bank deposits. Banks agreed to provide annual credit funding increases of 500 million euros for state investment projects and 1 billion euros for corporate and individual loans. Controversies Should the bank tax be global? On August 30, 2009, British Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Adair Turner had said it was "ridiculous" to think he would propose a new tax on London and not the rest of the world. However, in May, and June 2010, the government of Canada expressed opposition to the bank tax becoming "global" in nature. Controversy over the IMF's refusal to promote a financial transactions tax In a detailed analysis of the IMF's proposals, Stephan Schulmeister of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research finds that, "the assertion of the IMF paper, that [a financial-transactions tax] ‘is not focused on the core sources of financial instability,’ does not seem to have a solid foundation in the empirical evidence." Yet at least one independent commentator has endorsed the IMF's view. In an alternative critique of the IMF's stance, Aldo Caliari of U.S. NGO the Center of Concern said, "the naiveté with which the