The bank levy, announced by Prime Minister Viktor Orban early in June, is to generate HUF 200bn of budget revenue in 2010, including some HUF 13bn in revenue from extraordinary bank taxes already in place.

    On Thursday a new set of amendments by Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy took several amendments out of the bill, those that were to ease the burden of the levy on some service providers.

    Thus, insurance companies established after June 1, 2007 should now not be exempt from the levy. Tax rate for insurance companies is increased generally to 6.2pc from 5.8pc.

    Another, now abolished preference was intended to help savings cooperatives. According to the final version they should be helped by paying only 0.15pc of the tax base up to HUF 50bn and 0.5 over and above, instead the general 0.45pc pertaining to credit institutions.

    Financial intermediaries will now be exempt from the bank levy, but the tax rate for financial enterprises will be raised uniformly to 6.5pc from 6.0pc.

    The base for the levy for investment companies allows the write-off of expenditures on investment service activities. The tax base for companies providing commodities trade services is to allow the exclusion of net sales revenue exclusively from the provision of commodities trade services. Profit from financial services offered by Magyar Posta was made exempt from the tax.

    National Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy said earlier that the bank levy was a point of contention at talks with delegations from the IMF and EU that were suspended at the weekend.

    "They don't like the bank levy, however, this HUF 200bn of the bank levy will consolidate the Hungarian budget," Mr Matolcsy said.