Agree 100%. The Government wants us to take everything sitting down. Be "reasonable", they say. My answer to that: Fuck You. Enough is enough. Douche Bags.
Too early to tell IMO. China has tried it for a longer period, though, and saw prices and volume plummet. Now they're re-instituting it. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a8gUqAR2Smak I didn't think I'd ever say this, but...let's learn a lesson about the free markets from Red China.
Here is probably the main point you want to make when writing these FUCKING IDIOTS - Enacting an enourmously burdensome transaction tax will drive liquidity completely away from these markets. The current bank bail-out proposal is being discussed for the sole reason of no liquidity for the "toxic" paper. By enacting this tax, the markets will face an even larger liquidity crisis, that will spread to the commodity markets and the bond markets, making Treasury products impossible to even price; same with commodities. The efects will be almost immideate. Producers (such as farmers, miners, etc) will not be able to price out their products because of the lack of liquidity. We will be in store for an even newer bail-out for the same exact reason: ILLIQUIDITY.
If you're going to write them you need to pretend you live in the member's state/district, even if sending a fax etc. Otherwise it just goes in the trash.
IF this ever got passed (big IF because I doubt it will), my guess would be that exchange members, which are the major liquidity providers, would probably get an exemption... which would mean that you could get around it by buying or leasing an exchange membership. That would definitely increase your monthly costs if you rented, or force you to make a substantial investment to your career if you decided to purchase a membership... but it would clearly be cheaper than the alternative. However, that may be what they want since that would have the desired effect of talks some of them have been rambling on about recently, which is the repeal of the 60/40 preferential tax treatment on futures transactions, since exchange members (except for ECM's) get their profits taxed as ordinary income. Its quite scary to even think about... it almost makes me want to buy a GEM membership as a hedge while they're still relatively affordable. Of course this is all just conjecture on my part.
Are you saying exchange members' profits already get taxed as ordinary income, or they would be taxed this way if the 60/40 treatment was eliminated? If the latter, wouldn't that apply to all traders, exchange members or not?