REPORT: Cyprus Agrees To New Plan To Tax Deposits ...

Cyprus has reportedly agreed to a new scheme to tax deposits in order to raise the money to bail out its banks.

According to Reuters, a 20 percent tax on deposits over 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus would be levied. That would be coupled with a 4 percent tax across the board elsewhere.

However, a subsequent report from the Cyprus News Agency citing a Cypriot official in the capital of Nicosia suggested that throughout the course of the day, Cypriot leaders in Brussels were getting further and further away from a deal with the country's "troika" of creditors at the EU, the ECB, and the IMF.

Via Greek newspaper Kathimerini:

“We are not in touching distance of an agreement,” the official, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the Cyprus News Agency.

According to the news agency, the official said that the impasse was a result of the “inflexible” stance of the International Monetary Fund representative in the troika.

“Every half hour, new demands are made,” the official said.

Remember — on Tuesday the Cypriot parliament overwhelmingly rejected a tax deposit scheme that was agreed to exactly a week ago. In the first version of the plan, deposits over 100,000 euros were to be taxed at 9.9 percent, while those below that level would have been 6.5 percent.

This new version is more progressive.

The Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers is meeting tomorrow night to discuss the Cyprus situation. European Commission chief Olli Rehn released a statement earlier on the need to reach a deal this weekend.

Any deal will need to be voted on and approved by the Cypriot parliament.

Via Peter Spiegel of the FT, here are the comments from Rehn.