Obama to propose $10-a-barrel oil tax

originally posted by: acackohfcc
How about a sales tax on stock trades?

Why?

I want to retire and I already contribute to my 401(k) after tax. Now, you are telling me because I save in this manner, I ought to be taxed every time I shift my portfolio around to try to avoid trouble and/or take advantage of changes?

Do you have something against people who are trying to save for retirement without the long arm of the government?

a reply to: ketsuko

Maybe the person was referring to rich people as we the poor can not possible afford to save for retirement.

a reply to: Slichter

I think it has more to do with low prices and the American consumer coupled with the fact the US economy is still recovering.

a reply to: ketsuko

It's a Bernie Sanders idea; Bernie Sanders Wants to Tax Stock Trades to Pay for Free College

The Vermont senator will propose a 50-cent tax on every $100 of stock trades on stock sales.

That's a 0.5% tax. I mean...if you're shifting $100,000 I'm kind of surprised that the $500 tax is going to hurt you. The tax is mainly targeting the practice of making many millions of transactions per second that major banks and corporations perform to shift wealth rapidly.

If a fraction of a percent tax is too harmful to your 401(k) you need a new financial adviser.

a reply to: links234

If a fraction of a percent tax is too harmful to your 401(k) you need a new financial adviser.

The point isn't that it's harmful. The point is that it's their money. There's already enough taxes to fund plenty of things. Focus on the waste and kickbacks first before implementing new taxes.

a reply to: EternalSolace

The point is that it will have a minimal impact on the average trader who's shifting their 401(k) who don't earn the interest. Wall Street wealth shifting is what earns the interest, in addition to the vast amount of speculative trading to give the holders of these retirement funds fractions of the multi-millions that are regularly traded and, in most cases, rewarded to brokers and full-time investors.

A Financial Transaction Tax isn't really the point of the thread though.

Final note though, we're $18 trillion in debt, I don't think there are enough taxes. Especially when we're the wealthiest nation in the world and yet, we can't manage to pay for some of our most basic needs without having to borrow money. In all honesty, we've been taxing ourselves all wrong. Regressive taxation and adding caps on taxation have decimated our local and federal budgets. There's some fat that can be trimmed, sure, but we're doing a piss-poor job of raising revenue in an effective manner.

originally posted by: links234
I don't think there are enough taxes.

Then by all means, break out YOUR goddamned check book and add a few percent to your payment to the IRS every April. Leave the rest of us out of it.

God am I ever disgusted at how greedy people are with other's money.

a reply to: links234

I don't care.

I don't care if it has "minimal impact" or not.

I was already taxed on that money once. I should not be taxed on it again. I don't care what your rationale for doing it is.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

I know, right? Building roads, firefighters, police, medical care, helping the homeless, social security, disability aid, those GREEDY bastards!

a reply to: Eilasvaleleyn

There's already enough tax money collected in the HUD budget to end homelessness and hunger 3x over. Why do we need more taxes?

originally posted by: Xcathdra
a reply to: EternalSolace

Or we could move all the subsidies the oil companies get from the feds and apply it to infrastructure instead.

Drawing from several sources here is what I came up with regarding subsidies to oil companies.

Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks.

-- MotherJones.com

In effect, U.S. taxpayers wrote a collective $7 billion bonus check to the oil industry when they filed their taxes last month.

-- Center for American Progress

Here is the thing, I wasn't able to find a hard number on our subsidies to those companies. I am for cutting the cord; the Federal Government has no business, outside scientific discovery, to fund or subsidize any industry or company.

a reply to: Eilasvaleleyn

Is not that they are greedy, is the government the one that is greedy, helping your fellow human beings should be voluntarily no forced by a system of government that think you own them a portion of what you make by default.

Sadly the poor still keeps getting poorer and increasing, the homeless still gets what volunteers and none profits organizations give them, and the government keeps cutting on services, they claim that is not enough money and that they need to tax us more.

Now see the logic, we still pay taxes and nothing gets done and taxes keeps coming. We had only barely touch the new taxes that thanks to Obama crap I mean care is heading our way and is not in the billions but trillions.

originally posted by: EternalSolace
a reply to: Eilasvaleleyn

There's already enough tax money collected in the HUD budget to end homelessness and hunger 3x over. Why do we need more taxes?

Isn't it amazing that those who always see the problem scream that we need to give more money to government to fix never, ever think to examine how many work for those government agencies, what they make, what their benefits are, what kind of bonuses they get, when they retire, what those pensions are like, etc., the same way they scrutinize those same things in a private corporation?

Then they wonder where all the money goes and why there is never enough.

They ought to research that. It might open some eyes.

a reply to: ketsuko

I'll never understand it. If the social programs we have now were actually used how they were supposed to be in the first place, half the federal employees would be out of a job saving millions, if not billions, of tax dollars. Which means taxes across the board could be lowered, especially for small business, and we'd have a proper middle class with plenty of jobs again.

Just look at GE and their move out of Connecticut. If you tax a business into oblivion, they're going to leave. It'll be a harsh lesson for that Connecticut town. It's why anything Obama does is nuts, especially in the energy sector, and why Sanders tax plan flat out scary.

a reply to: EternalSolace

Only in government would they take a study showing them that employees have so little work that they are spending time surfing porn on their government computers and use it as an opportunity to hire a new employee to watchdog the employees to make sure they don't do that.

In almost every other business, they would use it as an opportunity to downsize so that the remaining employees both have plenty to keep busy and get that message that surfing porn is off limits.

I have not gone through all the posts in this thread so far, apologies if this has already been calculated.

A barrel of oil is 42 Gallons (US).

In the US, typically refiners get around 20 gallons of gasoline per barrel of oil.

$10 tax per barrel divided by ~20 gallons per barrel = ~$0.50 per gallon of gas increase if the tax is directly passed on by the oil companies.

This is only a rough guess, as there are other products refined from a barrel of oil, in fact only about 51.4% of a barrel of oil is distilled into gas.

energyalmanac.ca.gov...

One could safely cut the estimate in half to $0.25 gallon, if the oil companies divvy the tax out evenly.

a reply to: Dreamwatcher

It's ¢.25 too much.

No more taxes.

a reply to: Dreamwatcher

They'll actually use this as an excuse to rise the price by $0.50 though.

The price of petrol/gas is almost completely artificial. The price of a barrel of oil has dropped like a rock, but how much has the price of gas dropped? (Percentage wise.)

a reply to: EternalSolace

A quarter of a cent is too much? That's an extra dollar per 400 gallons. I think you used the wrong symbol. ^_^

a reply to: Eilasvaleleyn

Any more taxes are too much.

In case you haven't noticed, a lot of people are struggling to survive. A tax imposed at any place in the chain of supply raises prices all along it.

How much extra money do you have to pay out for stuff that's more expensive all over the place? Everything is transported ... think about how much is made out of or uses plastic at some point ... any petroleum at all ...