FlashHarry: a tax? on gazillionaire banks? it'll never fly with the GOP. now, let's talk about taxing the poor and middle class - they LOVE to do that!

yeah they're already paying to extend the millionaire's tax cuts with medicare /social security/pell grant cuts.
they want to kill the payroll tax cut for the middle class.

I'm sure they'll go after kittens and puppies next.

Eddie Adams from Torrance: In high frequency trading, there are no "customers" to pass anything along to. They're not like "real" stock brokers that are buying shares on your behalf.

Most of these firms exist for the sole purpose of moving money around and taking advantage of minor pricing deviations.

I don't see why this should be a .03% tax... what's wrong with charging regular sales tax like we do on just about every other type of transaction?

because it's rich people that's why. their money is sacred.

Weaver95: R.A.Danny: Weaver95: R.A.Danny: They'll just pass the cost on to us anyway, with juice.

I don't think that's true. how many poor people out there are moving millions of dollars around on a daily basis?

I mean their customers. Many of us still haven't taken up stuffing cash into our mattresses.

I still don't see how they're going to pass this along to their customers. again - not very many people are moving large piles of money around.

Banks have customers. Banks charge customers fees. Banks have hours that can be reduced and labor that can be fired. Multiply nickle-and-diming across millions of customers and hundreds of branches and you get millions of dollars. They will do whatever they can to pass the cost onto the customer.

Wasn't this tax way way back first proposed as a means of funding the United Nations? I think that would be a more meaningful use of it, since so many financial transactions are transnational by nature.

/light dashes of troll

Nuking Wall Street from orbit is the only way to be sure, but this proposal is a start.


Jamdug!: Not a bad idea, but I'm curious how they came up with that exact number.

Yeah, I'm curious too.
Is the percentage justified in order to calm the tits of market volatility to within certain parameters, is it justified by the dangerousness of kind of financial schemes it hits hardest, or is it just that the revenue generated fits a certain goal in deficit reduction?
Likely all of those good reasons, and more besides, but it'd be interesting to know how they arrive at 0.03%

I'm also curious how the moneygrubbbers will scheme to make a loophole around this. Besides owning Congress, I mean.

D). Will have less chance of passing a vote, he'll even getting out of committee, than the Raping Puppies and Systematic Destruction of the Environment Act of 2012

.03%?! .03%?! Make sure you at least cup my balls while you're raping me in the ass with your taxes! Why don't you just steal the food out of my children's mouths, you tax and spend cowards! At this rate I'll only have enough money to get an Audi A8. F*cking commies...

Alles was ist, endet.
Ein düst'rer Tag
dämmert den Göttern:

... and about bloody time.

Wait! You can't tax the rich. They'll just get all pissy and stop making money.

Some people just aren't happy unless they are raising taxes and griping about the rich, they have no lives of their own and never will. They'll go to their graves bitter and envious.

Reduce speculation? I don't think so. This is mainly aimed at high speed traders... If you research it, you find that they actually BRING DOWN the cost of securities. These little companies are costing the BIG companies lots of money (by being the market maker). What we need is even more small high speed trading companies to reduce the spread even more and make stock trading more fair.

DarthBrooks: ThunderPelvis: Yes, because a .03% tax per transaction is exactly equal to a 30% tax on your cable line. Are you this retarded offline, or just trolling?

Because taxes always get paid out of the corporate profits and never get added to the customer's bill, is that the point you're trying to claim here?

Because customers are powerless to choose where they shop, is that the point you're trying to claim here?

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

People who buy things and then sell them are pretty much the corner-stone of a free market. Sure it feels abstract when you hear of day traders doing it, but it sure seems like a valid thing to do to me. And, for as much as people biatch about other people doing it; YOU can do it. It's not exactly the free money machine people make it out to be.

The concern I have with the tax on transactions is that all of the big financial institutes in the US have offices all over the world. Heck, even the SMALL ones have offices all over the world. But these are separate legal entities, setup outside of the US. And we're talking about very large sums of money. They can buy and sell whatever they want in markets all over the place.

What happens when, all of a sudden, the US government passes legislation that immediately makes US transactions less profitable while making every Non-US transaction more favourable?

I wonder if there could be unintended consequences when jobs and money end up going outside of the US. Again, I don't know, I'm actually wondering. The world is increasingly global. I say this as a US Citizen living and working in Europe for a US-based company. It's kinda weird.

Why is "It will affect someone other then you" a valid justification for taxation?

I always love that the revenue projections assume that the taxed item will sell/move at the same rate after the new tax as it did before the new tax.

Traders will slow down their trades and the revenue will go down, of course the new spending will not.