I have read more than 225 articles, blogs, forums, etc. on this transaction tax. I am worried about my retirement. I cannot believe the ignorance. It’s as though it were intentional. AFL-CIO failed to mention: Retirement calculator says just a 1% difference in annual yield will reduce your pension fund by one third over a working lifetime because of reduced compounding. You will have one third less to live on! Understand? Instead of retiring on $15K, you will live on $10K per year. The fund will pay the new tax as the manager buys or sells stock at least once per year. Bid-Ask margins will increase from 1 cent and cost you 50 cents per share as a result of most of the competitive trading activity being stopped by the tax. That’s the point, right? The 50 cent trading cost of a $25 per share stock is a 2% loss on each buy or sell that the yield of the fund will be reduced by. Brokerages will fail, less competition and much higher fees. There won’t be a break-down of costs on your statements. ALL OF THESE COSTS AND MORE WILL PASS ON TO THE RETIREE BY REDUCING THE YIELD OF THE FUND.

Nothing but LIES about billions in revenue collected from this proposed tax. The Independent Budget Office of New York City’s comprehensive study revealed that a much smaller tax on just the NYSE and AMEX exchanges would yield a NEGATIVE TAX REVENUE WITH HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF JOBS LOST, most of the jobs would not be directly related to finance. Imagine millions of jobs lost if all US exchanges were taxed.

I have not read one study that finds a benefit from this antiquated tax. This tax would have done nothing to prevent this financial crisis from happening or markets from falling. There are or were about 12 countries that have this tax and they have had worse problems than the US. That is why they have lowered their transaction tax, abolished it or are considering abolishing it as they have known it suppresses revenue and causes unintended consequences often with disastrous results. Google what happened to Sweden when they tried this tax for a few years. India is considering abolishing the tax after only 5 years of poor results.

What the ? There is no relationship! Stocks and my retirement are totally unrelated to the real estate flippers, mortgage defaulters and the disastrous mortgage derivatives that were not even traded on the highly regulated exchanges. Good grief. Loons.

Don’t Taxprey On Me. There are 120 million Investor Class Voters.