OK folks. The T3 Live guys are now "proposing" an "Order Cancellation Tax". That is incredibly dangerous. It opens Pandora's Box to lead straight to taxes on stock trades. PLEASE, email the guys over there & enter comments at the bottom of their article to shut down that idea quick before it spreads. Once congress starts fiddling around with taxes on trading, it's going to spread fast. http://blog.t3live.com/2010/02/proposal-for-order-cancellation-tax.html
No point convincing and educating here - they probably know very well what they are doing... that one was probably planted by PR agencies so as to resemble an "industry initiative"... time to stop thinking that "financial" media like FT or Bloomberg should be automaticaly anti-FFT... or conversely, that left-wing newspapers like Guardian are our "enemy". You just can't tell a friend from foe these days, so a fail-safe option is to avoid any kind of stereotyping and to keep on questioning everything and double-checking all sources, remaining skeptical and unconvinced. That particular "proposal", a tax imposed on the very act of posting a limit order anywhere in the order book is in fact a "negotiations tax", equivalent to taxing all bids in every e-Bay auction... and also all auctions ending without reserve price being reached. How realistic is that? Little wonder that it would raise 100 times more than the already volume-annihilating transactions tax. While there is already a cancellation fee in certain markets with entrenched monopolies (you know who you are, these markets are raising virtually zero revenue from capital gains taxes... why not connect the two facts? And this is not necessarily a market-maker's dream either. One of the unintended consequences of a tax like this would be that most of the taxable volume would move off exchange (becoming "dark", "hidden", "upstairs", etc.), and even without access to any special trading venues, avoiding a cancellation tax like that would be as simple as a mouse click... or rather - it already is.
They need to hear our side before Scott Redler from T3 gets on cnbc & starts touting it. He's a frequent guest on that channel. We don't need Erin Burnett pumping this thing up in story after story. And, we don't need congress focussing on more taxes on us. Wait til Defazio catches wind of this thing being promoted by "Wall Street" as he'll say. This forum was set up to quickly respond to taxation proposals. This is a new one. Please respond over there. http://blog.t3live.com/2010/02/proposal-for-order-cancellation-tax.html
why do you think it is the t-3 guys are proposing a cancellation tax? its of course because they're all manual traders and don't cancel much thus it effects them little. t-3 makes almost all there money overiding peoples commissions and profits so they're selfishly trying to protect there profit center just as anyone would. why is robert green on here? His business centers around traders and hedge fund guys and he'd also be hurt badly.why are any of us on here? we're active traders and would be devasted by this tax. UNFORTUNATELY WE'RE A VERY VERY MINOR SLICE OF SOCIETY AND ALL ARE RANTING AND RAVING WILL CHANGE VERY LITTLE . The little guy at ameritrade or etrade that trades 6-12 times a year is hurt very little.but with that said the truth is the amount of revenue this tax would produce is very very small compared to the ests. trading would contract 70% min as the top 10% of active traders,hedge funds and mutual funds control i bet 80% or more of the vol and they would cease to exist.the desperation for revenue is great right now due to the irresponsibility of our gov't and unfortunately the 95% who had nothing to due with this huge deficit will pay a huge price.so now even within the trader community we'll start seeing people pushing there self interests. for instance a vanguard would rather see a transaction tax than a raise in the capital gain and dividend rate from 15% to 30% or more as that destorys the attractiveness of there product. THE TRUTH IS THE TOP 5% OF THE WEALTHY PAY 80% OF THE TAXES AND IT ONLY IF YOU TAX THEM TO DEATH WILL YOU SEE THE DEFICIT SHRINK
Don't underestimate the amount of people of all levels who read this thread. I continually build the audience here with industry execs, institutional traders, and retail traders. We just crossed 400,000 views of this thread today. Our actions immediately after Cramer voiced support for the transaction tax played a significant role in his position reversal. Please take a few moments & enter a comment on the T3 live site. The more negative replies they receive, the less likely they are to start vocally pushing this tax. Entering a reply there will take less than 60 seconds.
The irony of a post talking about ranting and raving that comes across as ranting and raving... Actually, the little guy who trades 6-12 times annually could easily turn over his portfolio completely over the course of a year. Even that low level of activity could cost him substantially over the course of an investing lifetime (to the tune of a double digit percentage difference between his and an untaxed portfolio).
New article by the UK Taxpayers Alliance... http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/research/2010/02/the-robin-hood-tax.html Monday, February 22, 2010 The Robin Hood Tax worth reading...
Thanks for posting that. There is a link in the piece to some Conservative who is for the tax (in the UK). I sure hope Cameron doesn't come out in favor of the tax at some point after he wins the election. -Guru