This will never pass, not with high-frequency trading being so lucrative for investment banks and hedge funds.
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Two U.S. lawmakers will introduce measures to impose a transaction tax on financial firms that resembles a proposal released by the European Union.
Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, and Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, will introduce the bills tomorrow in their respective chambers. The bills will give the United States an increased role in the international debate over a transaction tax, which is likely to be discussed at the Group of 20 summit this week in Cannes, France.
“It’s a significant way to raise some needed revenue,” Harkin said in an interview today in Washington. “Quite frankly, I bet nobody would even feel it.”
The European Union in September proposed a financial- transaction tax that would take effect in 2014 and raise about $57 billion euros ($78 billion) a year. Germany and France have led a push for global implementation.
The bills are unlikely to become law: Republicans, who have opposed transaction taxes in the past, control a majority in the House. President Barack Obama’s administration has also voiced concerns over the proposal and declined to give a direct endorsement in advance of the G-20 summit that opens Nov. 3.
The chances a transaction tax could pass in the U.S. “are less than 50/50” primarily because of Republican opposition, Brian Gardner, senior vice president of research for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. in Washington, said in a Sept. 28 note to clients.
The exchanges would be negatively affected by the tax because “volume will drop off,” Sam Ginzburg, a partner and head of capital markets at First New York Securities LLC, a New York-based proprietary trading firm, said today.
“I shudder to think of the landscape of the market if this happens,” Ginzburg said.
Harkin and DeFazio introduced similar proposals in recent years that fell short; the lawmakers expressed hope that the European proposals may increase support in the U.S. Congress.
Harkin and DeFazio are proposing a lower rate for the U.S. While the EU proposal would apply a tax of 0.1 percent on trades of stocks and bonds, the U.S. tax would be “about three basis points” or 0.03 percent, Harkin said.
“We’re simplifying it, looking at a lower rate and actually substantially mirroring the proposal in Europe,” DeFazio said in an interview.