ASSOCIATION
FINANCIAL-TRANSACTION TAX

Press release dated Jan. 5, 2010.

Please sign and send our new petition "A financial-transaction tax is detrimental to many industries." We consolidated several points into this short and effective letter written by Robert A. Green. We need your help in asking your trader friends and colleagues to sign and send one or both of our petitions to their Congressmen and President Obama to reach our goal of 25,000+ signers/senders. It takes just a few minutes to send our petition letter for free to your Congressmen and/or President Obama. You are welcome to customize the letter as you see fit. For a small charge, you can print and mail the letter. This is recommended, as it's more effective in generating positive reply letters.

Our first petition, "Save Traders' Jobs: Do Not Enact a Financial-Transaction Tax," was very successful with many signers receiving replies from their Congressmen. The frequency of signatures escalated and then peaked in the week of Dec. 11.

This important second petition focuses on all market users, including retail investors, farmers, and other industries. We are hoping this petition jump starts our efforts again. We don't have a budget to advertise or use lobbyists and our success as a trading community will be a result of our joint social media and viral marketing efforts. It's free to do, but it takes some work. Please help us and help yourself too.

VIDEO:"Don't Penalize All Investors"
Robert A. Green speaks to Karen Gibbs of MoneyShow.com at The Traders Expo Las Vegas on Nov. 21, 2009 about the financial-transaction tax threat.

Potential Financial-Transaction Tax

With the recession and ongoing changes in Washington DC, government spending is headed higher and tax revenues have dropped. The escalating budget deficit is starting to threaten the U.S. dollar and Treasury market. The 2010 mid-term elections may slow down big-ticket tax increases on the upper class, and the Bush administration tax cuts on that group expire in 2011. Politicians are hungry for new sources of revenue, and unfortunately one group they are targeting is traders and banks. Several health-care and jobs proposals or bills have included a financial-transaction tax and/or increases to long-term capital gains tax rates; rising from 15 to 20 percent with repeal of the Bush tax cuts and the House's health care bill proposed raising the rate further to 24 percent.

Although traders dodged a bullet in the Obama 2010 budget and earlier rounds, recent highly publicized jobs bills and proposals by the AFL-CIO union and other proponents with majority power in Congress and the administration are lining up a coordinated effort to pass a financial-transaction tax on traders. This tax has the power to put many active traders out of business. Traders need to fight it and defend their ground! In the game of “tax musical chairs,” traders won’t find a seat when the music stops if this tax is enacted.

GreenTraderTax Blog:
Archived blog articles on the financial-transaction tax. Click here to access the entire archives.

Dec 10 09 - U.S. regime change our best hope?
Dec 08 09 - Reply to The Hill's opinion piece
Dec 08 09 - EliteTrader thread "1/4% Tax on all stock trades pushed in NY Times today"
Dec 04 09 - Paying for jobs with TARP: Good idea or bad idea?
Dec 04 09 - FT tax will hinder technology innovation, manufacturing
Dec 03 09 - Response to economists' support of FT tax
Dec 01 09 - Response to op-ed articles supporting the financial-transaction tax
Nov 25 09 - Financial-transaction tax: Not dead globally
Nov 24 09 - Save traders' jobs: Do not enact a financial-transaction tax
Nov 20 09 - Financial-transaction tax update 2: Global consensus needed
Nov 19 09 - Financial-transaction tax update 1 (11/19)
Nov 18 09 - More thoughts on the financial-transaction tax (Nov. 17, 2008)
Nov 09 09 - Financial-transaction tax maybe dead on arrival globally, which is good news locally
Oct 21 09 - Financial-transaction tax remains a hot button issue
Sep 03 09 - AFL-CIO lends support to a dreaded financial-transaction tax
Aug 06 09 - Traders Association
May 14 09 - 2010 Obama Budget Tax Proposals: Some Clarifications
May 12 09 - New potential attack on 60/40 treatment for dealers
Mar 05 09 - SEC raising fees
Mar 04 09 - Rep. Peter DeFazio defends financial-transaction tax on CNBC
Feb 27 09 - Did Chairman Frank say the financial-transaction tax is on hold pending Wall Street payback of TARP funds?
Feb 19 09 - Financial-transaction Tax Reintroduced in House as H.R. 1068
Jan 14 09 - Potential Financial-Transaction Tax of 0.25% on proceeds and purchases (a large article including background research, including key legislative history).

Green comments on media articles:
Washington Post, "Whose side is Obama on?" Nov. 25, 2009: Green's Comment.

The Hill, "Stock tax less likely for jobs bill" Nov. 19, 2009: Green's Comment.

Most replies to the media has been through our blog.

Active Trader magazine:

• April 2009: “A taxing issue for traders” A proposed transaction tax would significantly increase costs for traders, but it would also threaten wide swaths of the financial industry and make the U.S. markets less attractive to outside investors. By Robert A. Green. Click here.
  
• February 2010: "The financial transaction tax." After rearing its head at the November G20 meeting, the financial-transaction tax has again become a hot topic. By Robert A. Green.

For the latest news, comments and discussion on this tax,
see our Rally Congress Petition page and EliteTrader.com's thread 1/4% Tax on all stock trades pushed in NY Times today. You may want also do what I have done, set up daily Google Alerts for search term: "financial-transaction tax."

Here is an excellent earlier Petition against this tax at RallyCongress. http://www.rallycongress.com/no2tradertax/. We cooperated with the author and please sign this Petition too. It's good to have multiple Petitions and letters sent to Congress.

Conference Calls and Podcasts:
We discuss this tax (and other topics too) on our weekly conference calls, so please come join in that discussion. Click here for details and to listen to earlier Podcasts (recordings of our conference calls, available with a table of contents and written content too).

We had a large number of attendees on our conference call on Jan. 15th and Aug. 27th to discuss this special topic. Click here to listen to these podcasts.

If you have any ideas, comments, criticism, or suggestions for how to help our cause to defeat this financial-transaction tax, please contacts us at association@greencompany.com.

Thanks for your support!

Robert A. Green, CPA
CEO of the GreenTraderTax Traders Association