Thom Hartmann Suggests STET Tax on Stock Transactions

[Toro]

This is such a stupid idea.

I'd consider leaving this country if they did.

Yea, if you did, say you went to Japan, or the EU, and traded in their markets, then you would find just such a tax.

It's amazing that you wouldn't support this solution, in the aftermath of this huge bailout to avoid a dystopia, of the banks.

By the way, the truly rich, that top ten percent, many of them only trade stocks, and unless they sell at a profit, they don't pay taxes at all. Then, they only pay 15 percent, a pretty darned sweet deal, since the current top rate is 35 percent on ordinary income.

If you ask me, the real insanity is that they consider capital gains as so special as to be taxed outside or ordinary income. It should be included in regular income, and taxed at an indexed rate, just like interest income is.

Let me clue you in.

If you are going to have a tax to alter behavior, you apply the tax to, you know, the behavior!

The mess that we are in has absolutely jack to do with the stock market. It has to do with the housing and mortgage markets. Taxing stocks would not have changed what occurred in the financial markets one iota. The banks' problems are not in any way shape or form connected to transactions in the stock market.

Besides, you aren't taxing the banks. You are taxing savers. Margins in stock trading are thin. They would not absorb the tax. They would pass that on. So you would not be taxing the banks. What is the point?

As for taxing stock transactions, I have traded stocks around the world and have not been taxed for it. Exchanges may place a very small clearing and exchange fee on stocks, but that wouldn't even account for a rounding error of a rounding error in the total budget.

But it is very simple to avoid this. I can incorporate a partnership in a tax haven where all my transactions are sealed from the government, they cannot tax me at the point of income. If they want to tax me at the source, I'll just trade stocks in other countries.

 

[Fatality]

I'm sure we could raise money with an abortion tax.

make it a 100% tax on all abortions

 

[Old Rocks]

Thom's Blog
The AFL-CIO, and some of the Democrats, would like to assess a small tax - about a tenth of a percent - on every stock transaction. It's a good start but not enough. If we were to instate a .25 percent STET (tax) on every stock, swap, derivative, or other trade today, it would produce -- in its first year -- around $150 billion in revenue. Wall Street would be generating the money to fund its own bailout. After Hoover's 1931 bailout of the banks failed, FDR did a cold reboot of the entire system, putting into place strong rules to prevent speculative abuse. And he doubled the STET tax, both producing revenue that more than funded the Securities and Exchange Commission and further prevented a repeat of the speculative bubble of the 1920s that led directly to the Republican Great Depression. So let's go back to what works.

In strange news...
Protests from conservative "teabaggers" turned out to heckle Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego) during a town hall meeting. There were signs with racist overtones but they must have been surprised when they were countered by a newly-formed group called "Billionaires for Wealthcare." Dressed in formal attire, members pulled up in a limousine to greet other protesters, thanking them for "standing with billionaires" to oppose real healthcare reform. Don't you just love political theater?

 

[Paulie]

Thom's Blog
The AFL-CIO, and some of the Democrats, would like to assess a small tax - about a tenth of a percent - on every stock transaction. It's a good start but not enough. If we were to instate a .25 percent STET (tax) on every stock, swap, derivative, or other trade today, it would produce -- in its first year -- around $150 billion in revenue. Wall Street would be generating the money to fund its own bailout. After Hoover's 1931 bailout of the banks failed, FDR did a cold reboot of the entire system, putting into place strong rules to prevent speculative abuse. And he doubled the STET tax, both producing revenue that more than funded the Securities and Exchange Commission and further prevented a repeat of the speculative bubble of the 1920s that led directly to the Republican Great Depression. So let's go back to what works.

In strange news...
Protests from conservative "teabaggers" turned out to heckle Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego) during a town hall meeting. There were signs with racist overtones but they must have been surprised when they were countered by a newly-formed group called "Billionaires for Wealthcare." Dressed in formal attire, members pulled up in a limousine to greet other protesters, thanking them for "standing with billionaires" to oppose real healthcare reform. Don't you just love political theater?

What Old Rocks really means is: