A Tax Too Far

IBD Editorials ^ | September 1, 2009 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Taxes: With so many bad ideas rolling around Washington these days, what's one more? Democrats and their union allies think slapping a tax on investment trades is a good idea. In fact, it's a recipe for a meltdown.

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Given the turmoil in the financial markets in recent years, you'd think mature adults would realize that destabilizing tax hikes would be out of the question. Yet the AFL-CIO and congressional Democrats are proposing a one-tenth of 1% tax on all stock trades as a way to pay for things like infrastructure.

This so-called Tobin Tax — named for Nobel prize winner James Tobin, who came up with the idea to lower volatility in the financial markets — would raise as much as $100 billion from investors.

But it's really nothing more than radical redistribution of wealth masquerading as fiscal rectitude.

Nor is this just an American idea. Britain is in the middle of a national quarrel over a Tobin Tax on its most successful industry, the financial business. Government bureaucrats and left-leaning politicians want to take The City — London's mighty financial district — down a peg or two.

And when the U.S., Britain and other members of the G-20 meet later this month, they are being encouraged by "activists" — that is, wealth-hating leftists — to consider an international Tobin Tax on all financial transactions as a kind of social leveling device.

This is the dream of all the global social engineers — a massive tax on wealth that could be used by unaccountable international bureaucrats for their grand schemes to make a better world.

What will come of it is what has come from all international organizations of governance — incompetence, corruption, malfeasance and endless misery for those whom they supposedly want to help.

[Kaslin]

[sourcery]

Permanently and irrevocably eliminate the income tax in all its forms, then we’ll talk.

[Kaslin]

[parsifal]

I read this on Drudge and think it is a great idea. I wouldn’t mind if they put a freeze period on re-selling stocks, say months to a year. That way you stop a lot of the speculation. Our financial markets should not be casinos.

parsy, who says the real good thing is the slow down this tax would impose

[Uncle Miltie]

Destroying wealth every way the roving eye of leftism moves.

[Colonial Warrior]

The Man of STEAL!!!

[immadashell]

Another nail in the 2010 liberal coffin.

[spyone]

An incredibly stupid idea.

[maica]

As for the argument that the tax would be “only” 0.1%, any tax that raises $100 billion isn’t small.

$$$$$

Something like an “only 0.1%” is what motivated our huge financial institutions to start bundling, renaming and reselling new kinds of “securities” formerly known as mortgages. We all know how the greed of agencies lusting after their “only 0.1%” worked out for the general health of the banking/insurance/brokerage industry. They kept selling these “bundles” back and forth, adding on the “tiny” commission each time, until what was in the bundle and the price of said bundle bore no relationship to each other.