BD Lobby Group to Fight New Financial Transaction Tax Bill

The Financial Services Institute plans to thoroughly comb through the financial transaction tax legislation introduced Wednesday by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., that would levy a 0.03% tax on most financial trades.

Chris Paulitz, senior vice president of membership and marketing at FSI, says that fighting the imposition of such a tax in various states has been a “top priority” for the trade group. For instance, “a few years ago, Minnesota was proposing a 5.5% tax, and Ohio a 5% tax. We were able to hold meetings with the states and our members wrote hundreds of letters and we prevailed” in stopping such bills. “But it’s an ongoing issue for us.”

DeFazio’s said the Putting Main Street FIRST (Finishing Irresponsible Reckless Speculative Trading) Act will “curb speculative Wall Street trading,” adding that “although much of the excessive risk on Wall Street is derived from high-volume, short-term speculative trading, which helped cause the 2008 Wall Street collapse and the trillion-dollar 2010 ‘Flash Crash,’ these practices still flourish on today’s trading floors.”