January 13, 2015
In a Wonkblog piece Max Ehrenfreund wrongly described the Democrats proposal for a financial transactions tax as a major tax increase on investors. This is not true. Research shows that trading volume will decline roughly in proportion to the increase in transactions costs that result from this tax.
This means that if the tax increases trading costs by 50 percent, we would expect trading volume to decline by roughly 50 percent. This means that investors might pay 50 percent more for each trade, but since they only trade half as much, the total amount they spend on trading costs would be little affected. The cost of the tax would be borne almost entirely by the financial industry, not investors.
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