Reply to post: Re: Tobin/Robin Hood Tax

Tax Systems: The good, the bad and the completely toot toot ding-dong loopy

Doctor Syntax Silver badge

Re: Tobin/Robin Hood Tax

"We have one in the UK.

It's called Stamp Duty, and costs 0.5% on share purchases."

And at a larger rate on property sales.

Given sufficient capital it would be feasible to handle house sales by an agent taking your existing house in part-exchange. Because the transaction tax would be taken twice there's no chance of this happening except, maybe, on corporate-funded relocations (something like that actually did happen to me).

What happens, therefore, is that agents and solicitors end up arranging long chains of transactions all set up to happen on the same day so each deal is only subject to a single transaction tax. If something goes wrong with one link in the chain the whole thing is delayed or collapses completely. If you need to move for work without the employer paying relocation you can end up renting in one place for months at a time which your family stuck hundreds of miles away (been there too).

It's an enormous deadweight effect which has a bad negative effect on mobility of labour.

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