"The APT Tax achieves all the reforms of the NST with none of NST's negatives. "
It would seem to me that placing such a tax on financial transaction such as stock purchases and sales would quickly bring the financial markets to a grinding halt.
Investors would simply stop, and I mean STOP as in totally and quickly, trading securities on US stock exchanges. Capital formation would CEASE, and jobs would disappear QUICKLY as investment would halt.
Unless I'm missing something.
Yep. And if you read into the plan the APT is based on, the Tobin Tax, that is exactly why they intend to do it.
The Tobin Tax is a tax intened to be applied to the currency trading market. The globalist backers of the plan want to do it to "throw sands in the wheels of the currency market" in order to stabilize third world economies. Revenues, they say, will be used to fund the IMF, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions. See the despicable plan here:
http://www.tobintax.org.uk/
Re: investors would simply stop
Why?
"It would seem to me that placing such a tax on financial transaction such as stock purchases and sales would quickly bring the financial markets to a grinding halt."
"Investors would simply stop, and I mean STOP as in totally and quickly, trading securities on US stock exchanges. Capital formation would CEASE, and jobs would disappear QUICKLY as investment would halt."
"Unless I'm missing something."
I'm not sure why you think this would happen.
If someone buys $100,000 worth of stock, they pay a $280 transaction fee.
They pay no other taxes of ANY kind, ever.
A family with a income of $100,000 pays $560 year in tax, as opposed to the $30,000 - $50,000 they pay now.
If, as a conservative you believe that lowering taxes INCREASES investments, then this is the ultimate expression of that idea.
Think about it. The avcrage family would pay only a few hundred dollars in taxes, federal, state, local, Social Security, Medicare, and sales tax. That's it.
So what do you think they're going to do with the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars they will now have left to spend.
"Investors would simply stop, and I mean STOP as in totally and quickly, trading securities on US stock exchanges. Capital formation would CEASE, and jobs would disappear QUICKLY as investment would halt."
Not at the tiny rates they are quoting. My biggest concern is as follows. Using their own numbers, we are talking about a huge decrease in the taxes that individuals would pay (at least directly to the fed govt). And yet, they claim that the proposal is revenue neutral. That means a huge increase in taxes that businesses would pay. That, in turn, means that an even greater proportion of our tax burden gets buried in the prices of the goods that are produced in the USA. The end result would be that US producers are even less competitive in the increasingly global world economic market that we are faced with today.
My conclusion is therefore that, although the poster may be right about the transaction tax accomplishing some of the goals of the FairTax, in this crucal respect, it would make the current situation worse, rather than better.
I am more than willing to give the transaction tax a seat at the tax reform debate, as well as any other legitimate proposal. A friend of mine who is a strong FairTax supporter told me that he supported the flat tax when it first came out, then switched to Tauzin's sales tax proposal, because he thought that it was better, then later to the FairTax. He said that if someone came out with a better plan tomorrow, he would support it. I agree totally with that sentiment. I am just not convinced that the transaction tax represents a better approach.
Seems it is a small percent of what you pay a broker now. I wouldn't see it grinding the market to a halt anymore than a slight bump in brokers fees would.