Paying for the Deficit | a 1/10th of 1% sales tax on speculative derivative trades

Paying for the Deficit | CommonDreams.org | March 28, 2009 | Ralph Nader

... So, who is going to have to pay more into the Treasury? Not the oil and gas industry whose advertised protests against removing unjustified tax breaks are saturating the radio and television stations. Not the real estate or defense industries. Certainly not the financial industry.

How about the very wealthy? Well Barack Obama is letting George W. "red-ink" Bush's tax cuts expire. So people earning over $250,000 a year will pay more

...For starters, close the "tax gap" which is defined as the difference between taxes owed and taxes actually paid. This amount is estimated to be $290 billion every year by the IRS. Several thousand more IRS tax collectors will pay for themselves many times over and help preserve some public sense of fairness by those Americans who regularly do pay their taxes.

This figure of $290 billion does not include the huge tax shelters and offshore tax havens harboring trillions of dollars from U.S. corporations and very wealthy Americans who do not wish to share onshore tax responsibilities. 

... ... Another huge source of revenue, with very little if any fallout on the average taxpayer, would be a Wall Street sales tax on speculative derivatives (not stocks or bonds). With an estimated $500 trillion traded in such bets on bets or bets on debts last year, a 1/10th of 1% sales tax could bring in $500 billion yearly.

Consumers pay sales taxes in most states of 5 to 7 percent on necessities, while Wall Street's casino gamblers buy trillions of dollars in derivatives and pay no sales tax. Unfair!  ...