1/4% Tax on all stock trades pushed in NY Times today

Quote from GreenTraderTax:

A CA Congressman wrote one of our Petition signer/senders the below email reply. I leave out the Congressman’s name since I did not request permission to use his email on a public thread. I wrote the Congressman the below reply email.

CA Congressman wrote:
“November 28, 2009
Dear Mr. X:

Thank you for contacting me regarding your opposition to a transaction tax on securities transactions. Legislation proposed by Mr. DeFazio imposes a modest transaction tax of no more than 0.25 percent on a securities transaction. I believe this is a common sense approach to curtailing speculative trading and financing the bailouts that such speculative transactions have necessitated.

Transaction fees like this have long existed in other countries. For example, the United Kingdom charges a tax of 0.25 percent on the purchase or sale of share of stock. Such a fee has little or no effect on long-term investors, but may cause day traders and speculators to think twice about their trades. That would be a good thing. Our economy has not benefited from investment strategies that turned Wall Street into Las Vegas. Furthermore, the reduction in transactions costs due to the development of computer technology over the last quarter century far exceeds the size of this tax. I believe that a transaction tax is one part of an appropriate strategy for the difficult times we face.”

Green reply email:

Dear Congressman x (D-CA):

Regards and thanks for replying to one of the traders that sent our Petition.

May I refute some of your arguments?

It's not "common sense" to curtail speculative trading. Rather, it could be perceived as government heavy-handed market manipulation to effectively bar short-term market makers (traders) from doing their job to deliver more efficient pricing in the markets for the benefit of the public. See http://www.greencompany.com/blog/index.php?postid=41 and particularly Wikipedia on Speculation vs. Investment:. Short term traders kick the tires on price each day, wringing out inefficiency, rumor and hype. That reduces bubble conditions. Traders use sophisticated technologies to analyze stocks, and they are not gamblers.

Your action if successful will leave only the major banks as traders and you are then placing the American public's trust in banks for pricing. China also restricts traders, not allowing shorting of stocks and baring the media from writing negative stories on stocks. Is the U.S. government trying to squash one of the checks and balances in our markets, the small-business (making making) traders?

The tax is not "modest", but rather sufficient to put traders out of business. Lost trading jobs will cause loss of Main Street jobs too.

The UK has many exemptions on their stamp (transaction) tax with a credit on income tax too. Are you going to exempt the big banks from this tax and only kill jobs for small-business traders? That's the reverse of what Americans want; they want a bank levy on Wall Street and to allow small-business traders to continue their important role in the markets.

Wall Street is not Las Vegas. Main Street traders make a living or add to their living by trading online and they never go near Wall Street. Just look at all the signers on our Petition http://www.rallycongress.com/greentradertax-traders-association1/ to see the comments and Main Street addresses. The vast majority of signers live in your state of CA. Is CA's safety net ready to help them out, after you contribute to them getting fired from their trading jobs?

Are you also going to pass a transaction tax on gambling transactions (or raise existing taxes on it)?

Placing a tax on transactions to take the placeholder of productivity gains is not the American way.

Please reconsider this harmful move. The end result with be lost tax revenue, lost jobs on Main Street, more pain for many families and more inefficient, expensive and dangerous financial markets.

Thank you for your consideration, time and honorable service to our country.

Take care,
Robert A. Green, CPA
xxxxxx
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Mr. Green can you let us know if it was one of these congressman or women, and if you can tell that trader to post it. I have posted from my senator before on here:)

Is it Pete Fortney Stark ( CA)

Barbara Lee (CA)

Lynn Woolsey (CA)


You can just say yes and we can assume its one of those three
 
The (above Fox video) guest said tiny and reasonable in describing the transaction tax, which means he doesn't understand the plight/math of daytraders.

It's easy to propose taxing something you don't understand or live with.

In my view, only Congressmen who have material numbers of traders in their home districts should have the right to propose a tax on traders.

Otherwise, it's "taxation without representation." Didn't that rally cry start our American revolution?
 
Quote from jksn922:

Here is the video on the trader tax from Fox Business News.


http://video.foxbusiness.com/121219...y_id=1292d14d0e3afdcf0b31500afefb92724c08f046
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WHY does everyone who talks about this tax other than us think it's modest? Why is it that NOBODY else sees the sheer ridiculousness of the size of this tax? Doesn't it drive you guys crazy? Even the people who argue against the tax on the tube for the most part have the 'it's a small tax' view like this guy on the fox interview.
 
Quote from GreenTraderTax:

The (above Fox video) guest said tiny and reasonable in describing the transaction tax, which means he doesn't understand the plight/math of daytraders.
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Mr. Green, you beat me to it. My thoughts exactly.
 
I mean if Jim Cramer doesn't get the lunacy of the arithematic involved here(and I'm pretty sure he still doesn't), I guess we can't expect anyone outside of the trading realm to grasp the idiocy.
 
Quote from bears21:

folks we need to show examples over a long period of time 10 years 30 years etc so americans can see black and white. im not that good in math anybody want to take a swing at it assuming you put away 5k a year for 40 years and turn over you portolio once a year
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again people they need to see numbers if i was gonna make 1,500,000 for my retirement with no tax or 1,000,000 with the tax kinda hard for middle america to say hmmm i would still prefer the tax atleast that half a million or so that i was taxed over 40 years went to a good cause
 
The Fox guest was very soft on the tax, saying things like "something has to be taxed" and "what does Wall St. expect", not mention the bit about Perlmutter and Defazio "just trying to look for a way to reduce deficit spending". BTW, he (Al Lewis) writes for the Denver Post -- you know, the same newspaper that Ed Perlmutter probably reads everyday.
 
Brief mention of the tax in a new NY Times article:

The package could also include a tax on financial transactions, which several Democratic senators said would have to be written in a way to avoid driving financial activity offshore.

"I don't want to impose a tax that clearly is going to make American companies less competitive, (but) it's on the table," said Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/12/01/us/politics/politics-us-usa-congress-jobs.html
 
Quote from MrPowerBallad:

Brief mention of the tax in a new NY Times article:

The package could also include a tax on financial transactions, which several Democratic senators said would have to be written in a way to avoid driving financial activity offshore.

"I don't want to impose a tax that clearly is going to make American companies less competitive, (but) it's on the table," said Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/12/01/us/politics/politics-us-usa-congress-jobs.html
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Well thats not great news there. It seems like if they did pass it they dont want compaies to go off shore to they could figure that in and make it illegal to trde offshore or make it illegal to let banks put your money offshore into a trading account, the same way banks cannot fund gambling accounts off shore the way they used to.
 
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