Why aren't we taxing Wall Street?

[howaboutme]

The obvious answer to our national indebtedness and weak fiscal position is a need for more revenue. What better place to get it than from those who stole it? Late last year US Senators, Harkin and Defazio promoted the establishment of a Wall Street transaction tax of only 1/4 of one percent that would have excluded IRAs and 401Ks and the first $100K in transactions. They estimated that it would have brought in $150 Billion a year into the Treasury. Why aren't they being taxed to help bail out our Treasury and bring our national revenue requirements into line, and they could have helped fund health care?

Obviously Wall Street greed has been the catalyst behind the latest economic debacle. Actually they have been one of the main catalysts behind the unfair trade policies that have decimated the USA over the last 3 or 4 decades. They've promoted the rush to the bottom that most Americans have experienced while a relative handful of these NYC financiers have reaped more wealth in a year than 90% of the middle class does in a lifetime. It is time for payback from these greedy bankers whose unethical actions have caused irreparable harm to our nation.

I would suggest instead of only a 1/4 of one percent that the tax should be 1% on all Wall Street transactions which would bring in $600 billion a year and enough to begin actually turning around our problems and improving the USA.

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/12/17/wall-street-transaction-tax-would-raise-150-billion-per-year/

Unless Wall Street starts to participate in and pay back the USA for all the collateral damage that they have done, and do their share to rebuild our nation, I'm in favor of outsourcing this gang of thieves to China or elsewhere. They currently do more harm than good and have put an enormous taint on America.

[gravity]

1. Wall Street is taxed off its profits

which is more fair than transactions. Any transaction that results in a profit is already taxed.

If you want to increase the taxes they pay, raise the capital gains and corporate taxes.

[w4rma]

2. Yup. We are taxing Wall Street at less than half the income tax rate.

Capital Gains taxes should be absorbed into the income tax and treated exactly the same way.

[gravity]

5. That is for long term capital gains

Most of the transactions in Wall Street are taxed the same as income.

[unblock]

7. short term capital gains are still taxed at 15% max

except in unusual case like some reit distributions.

[aquart]

3. "any transaction that results in a profit"

I thought Wall Street took their profits off the top like a casino. If you buy they get paid. If you sell they get paid.

[gravity]

6. When they skim off the top, the government gets their cut too

Profit is profit. If you want to tax them more, just raise the current taxes on them

[aquart]

9. Not sufficiently punitive.

See, I DO want to punish Wall Street.

1 John 3:17-18 – “If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need but shuts off his compassion from him-how can God’s love reside in him? Little children, we must not love in word or speech, but in deed and truth.”

I'd love to hang some bankers.

[msongs]

4. lol US business hide their profits. a transaction fee would be better. especially derivatives and

all the other secret scams these criminals use to rape honest americans, in a financial sense.
Those who profit from the deliberate destruction of the nation should pay.....more.

Msongs

[howaboutme]

8. I support transaction tax because

I support a transaction tax because:

1/ Standard taxation rates do not apply to many of the players such as hedge fund managers who pay only a 15% capital gain tax rate when they should paying taxes at the same rate as income earners.

2/ The financial services sector typically writes off huge compensation and therefore the net profits are written down and distorted by the firms and not captured as business taxes by the treasury

3/ Part of it is punitive. Wall Street (financial services sector) caused this near depression and near economic collapse. Had not the financial sector played their shenanigans of risky insurance bets (CDS), and mis-rated securitized mortgages by the ratings agencies, and recklessly pushed mortgage liquidity to the public in the form of first and second mortgages we would not have had a problem. Wall Street has a much higher self impression of their own worth to the nation than their real contribution to GDP. They produce nothing tangible as in a real product except for the deals that benefit financiers. Had it not been for the taxpayers being put on the hook the major financial firms would have been bankrupt. Therefore I like the idea of a special tax that would tax revenue off the top instead of after they pillage the firms with their compensation and bonuses.


But we'll never see it because the players have Congress and the POTUS in their hip pocket and use the taxpayers as floor mats. The public will continue guaranteeing their 0% loans from the Fed window while the bankers go out and invest it in foreign markets.

[depakid]

10. A FTT and a Tobin tax on currency exchanges would bring in close to $200 billion per year

but the Obama administration won't have any of it.

Nor will they hold any of the players accountable for the behavior that caused the crash.

Folks can draw their own conclusions as to why that is.