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“Sanders will also release a detailed roadmap -- centered on new taxes on Wall Street -- to raise the $2.2 trillion dollars necessary to pay for this program an

“Sanders will also release a detailed roadmap -- centered on new taxes on Wall Street -- to raise the $2.2 trillion dollars necessary to pay for this program and his other college funding plans. It will include a 0.5% tax on stock trades (or 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Sanders believes that could raise more than $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years.” Sure hope “stock trades” doesn’t include retirement contributions or rollovers. I just rolled over 90k - that would’ve cost me $900 (sell, then buy).

zajd 7y ago
God forbid you have to contribute $900 for the future of the country. You realize 50%+ of Americans don't even have $1000 in savings, right?
solotronics 7y ago
Today we have hyper globalized financial systems and if a country implements taxes like this the big players just move their money elsewhere. This only ends up hurting middle class folks who are playing by the books. I think it would make much more sense to have a very simple tax system (a few percent on every capital gain or income, wether corporate or personal) and get rid of every other complexity and loophole. If America had one of the lowest corporate tax rates many companies would locate headquarters here and bring that few percent of billions of dollar we wouldn't have otherwise. I also think we could create a special administrative and economic zone (without minimum wage) in the first 50 miles of southern border and allow anyone to come work there from all over the world. This would create a pathway for people to come here legally and have civic and language classes to help integrate. We could pick the best and brightest from this zone for citizenship which I think is a more fair system. Before you dismiss this idea as colonial consider that this area would have the same human rights and laws as the rest of the US just with low wages, this would be better working conditions than most places on earth with similar wages while also providing a defined channel to gain US citizenship.
- dmos62 7y ago
  I like your ideas. However, I don't fully follow the the low corporate taxes one though. Is the idea to compete in a race-to-the-bottom with corporate taxes and profit from trickle-down economics? I think the popular critique of trickle-down is fair.
  - buboard 7y ago
    Corporation tax does not tax (rich) individuals
  - solotronics 7y ago
    It's not a race to the bottom, for a number of reasons America is a good place already for international corporations to have headquarters. We have a strong and mostly fair legal system, and rule of law that many countries do not have. We have a world class workforce. But by having high corporate income tax you are driving away companies that would otherwise HQ here and bring money and taxes. I see benefits and no downsides to making the environment here even more appealing to corportations.
    - dmos62 7y ago
      Race to the bottom was not a clear expression of what I meant. I meant that US would compete with other tax environments for lowest corporate taxes, which would drive down corporate taxes globally. The obvious implication is that the corporations then contribute even less to the governmental budgets. In terms of foreign policy, this has the problem of breaking solidarity with other countries. Actually, it seems that the whole idea is based on competition instead of cooperation, but given US policies today, that would be normal. What I'm wondering is would this pay off to the winner that would attract many corporations, but derive minimal taxes from them. What's the mechanism to profit from their operating within your administrative unit in that case?
      - solotronics 7y ago
        Corporations don't exist in a vacuum, they are organizations of people working and recieving salaries. I would argue that by having corporate headquarters located somewhere you are bringing massive net benefit if you only look at salary. The corporate income tax is just extra that the government can squeeze out of them and its become apparent that the biggest corporations can get out of most of that anyways in the US by careful gaming of the tax code. Thus my proposal to lower the rate to a more realistic amount and simplify the tax code. Amazon paid $0 corporate income tax last year on $11 billion in income, they structure the company around reinvesting all the profit for the exact reason of not paying taxes. 2% flat rate for everyone is much better than 0% for the most cunning.
mrep 7y ago
It's amazing how politicians like this propose these types of things and never look to see if anyone else has tried it because we have the perfect example, Sweden: "In January 1984, Sweden introduced a 0.5% tax on the purchase or sale of an equity security. Hence, a round trip (purchase and sale) transaction resulted in a 1% tax. The tax applied to all equity security trades in Sweden using local brokerage services as well as to stock options." As for the results: "revenues from these taxes were disappointing. For example, revenues from the tax on fixed-income securities were initially expected to amount to 1,500 million Swedish kronor per year. They did not amount to more than 80 million Swedish kronor in any year and the average was closer to 50 million. In addition, as taxable trading volumes fell, so did revenues from capital gains taxes, entirely offsetting revenues from the equity transactions tax that had grown to 4,000 million Swedish kronor by 1988" [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...
- r00fus 7y ago
  You know that the London Stock Exchange currently implements transaction taxes and that it generates billions (€3.8bn per year) yearly in revenue? [1] How about all these other countries that have implemented or are currently implementing them? [2] Looks like this clause is why the UK was successful while Sweden may not have been: "The tax is charged whether the transaction takes place in the UK or overseas, and whether either party is resident of the UK or not." Clearly the UK being a much larger securities market is a much better parallel to the US than Sweden. It all probably comes down to the implementation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#Unit... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#Unit...

zajd 7y ago

God forbid you have to contribute $900 for the future of the country. You realize 50%+ of Americans don't even have $1000 in savings, right?

solotronics 7y ago

Today we have hyper globalized financial systems and if a country implements taxes like this the big players just move their money elsewhere. This only ends up hurting middle class folks who are playing by the books. I think it would make much more sense to have a very simple tax system (a few percent on every capital gain or income, wether corporate or personal) and get rid of every other complexity and loophole. If America had one of the lowest corporate tax rates many companies would locate headquarters here and bring that few percent of billions of dollar we wouldn't have otherwise. I also think we could create a special administrative and economic zone (without minimum wage) in the first 50 miles of southern border and allow anyone to come work there from all over the world. This would create a pathway for people to come here legally and have civic and language classes to help integrate. We could pick the best and brightest from this zone for citizenship which I think is a more fair system. Before you dismiss this idea as colonial consider that this area would have the same human rights and laws as the rest of the US just with low wages, this would be better working conditions than most places on earth with similar wages while also providing a defined channel to gain US citizenship.

dmos62 7y ago
I like your ideas. However, I don't fully follow the the low corporate taxes one though. Is the idea to compete in a race-to-the-bottom with corporate taxes and profit from trickle-down economics? I think the popular critique of trickle-down is fair.
- buboard 7y ago
  Corporation tax does not tax (rich) individuals
- solotronics 7y ago
  It's not a race to the bottom, for a number of reasons America is a good place already for international corporations to have headquarters. We have a strong and mostly fair legal system, and rule of law that many countries do not have. We have a world class workforce. But by having high corporate income tax you are driving away companies that would otherwise HQ here and bring money and taxes. I see benefits and no downsides to making the environment here even more appealing to corportations.
  - dmos62 7y ago
    Race to the bottom was not a clear expression of what I meant. I meant that US would compete with other tax environments for lowest corporate taxes, which would drive down corporate taxes globally. The obvious implication is that the corporations then contribute even less to the governmental budgets. In terms of foreign policy, this has the problem of breaking solidarity with other countries. Actually, it seems that the whole idea is based on competition instead of cooperation, but given US policies today, that would be normal. What I'm wondering is would this pay off to the winner that would attract many corporations, but derive minimal taxes from them. What's the mechanism to profit from their operating within your administrative unit in that case?
    - solotronics 7y ago
      Corporations don't exist in a vacuum, they are organizations of people working and recieving salaries. I would argue that by having corporate headquarters located somewhere you are bringing massive net benefit if you only look at salary. The corporate income tax is just extra that the government can squeeze out of them and its become apparent that the biggest corporations can get out of most of that anyways in the US by careful gaming of the tax code. Thus my proposal to lower the rate to a more realistic amount and simplify the tax code. Amazon paid $0 corporate income tax last year on $11 billion in income, they structure the company around reinvesting all the profit for the exact reason of not paying taxes. 2% flat rate for everyone is much better than 0% for the most cunning.

mrep 7y ago

It's amazing how politicians like this propose these types of things and never look to see if anyone else has tried it because we have the perfect example, Sweden: "In January 1984, Sweden introduced a 0.5% tax on the purchase or sale of an equity security. Hence, a round trip (purchase and sale) transaction resulted in a 1% tax. The tax applied to all equity security trades in Sweden using local brokerage services as well as to stock options." As for the results: "revenues from these taxes were disappointing. For example, revenues from the tax on fixed-income securities were initially expected to amount to 1,500 million Swedish kronor per year. They did not amount to more than 80 million Swedish kronor in any year and the average was closer to 50 million. In addition, as taxable trading volumes fell, so did revenues from capital gains taxes, entirely offsetting revenues from the equity transactions tax that had grown to 4,000 million Swedish kronor by 1988" [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...

r00fus 7y ago
You know that the London Stock Exchange currently implements transaction taxes and that it generates billions (€3.8bn per year) yearly in revenue? [1] How about all these other countries that have implemented or are currently implementing them? [2] Looks like this clause is why the UK was successful while Sweden may not have been: "The tax is charged whether the transaction takes place in the UK or overseas, and whether either party is resident of the UK or not." Clearly the UK being a much larger securities market is a much better parallel to the US than Sweden. It all probably comes down to the implementation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#Unit... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax#Unit...