Completely agree...great letter
CME can afford to pay its taxes
Updated: November 8, 2011 7:44AM
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) took a stunning 54 percent of its $8 billion revenue as clear profit. That’s a higher percentage than any of the top 100 companies in the country!
Yet CME is threatening to leave Illinois if its tax bill isn’t reduced.
A tax break to the nation’s most profitable corporation would put Illinois residents at even greater risk of economic collapse. The governor should look in the opposite direction, toward a financial transaction tax.
Right now a Chicago mother pays over 10 percent in sales taxes for a pair of shoes for her child. A millionaire Chicago investor pays zero percent in sales taxes for a financial instrument.
How much money could be generated by a financial transaction tax in Illinois? CBOE handles over a billion contracts a year with a dollar volume of close to $1 trillion. A one-quarter of 1 percent tax on contracts would return $1.5 billion dollars, enough to pay off Chicago’s budget deficit.
The CME Group, which includes the Chicago Board of Trade, handles about 3 billion annual contracts worth well over $1 quadrillion. One-thousandth of 1 percent of that (about a dollar for every $100,000) would pay off the total budget deficit of Illinois.
Paul Buchheit, Edison Park
the rich get richer...
ReplyDeleteI wonder how McAuliffe and Mulroe will vote on this. I will be really angry if stock exchanges get tax breaks while I'm taxed to death!
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should threaten to move, too.
no one cares if the little guy moves
ReplyDeleteMy bet is McAuliffe will vote for cutting the taxes on the billionaires at CME. As for Mulroe, his vote of 'Present' on the Edison rate hike was cowardly - Will he do it again? I sure hope not. Vote no Senator.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of taxing useless parasites, Chicago should tax owners of the thousands of ugly billboards that obstruct our view. The two primary owners of these billboards are Clear Channel and CBS - Think billboards owned by billionaires. What would they do if their billboards are taxed? Threaten to leave town?
Todays' edition of the Nadig News listed how our legislators voted on the Com Ed bill. Columnist Russ Stewart writes an article praising the Daley-Emanual reign, praising Emanual with the following; "his popularity is stratospheric, his power undisputed...his leadership qualities shine."
ReplyDeleteReading this suck-up piece reminded me of Roykos' quote about Murdoch newspapers; I'll paraphrase -"no self-respecting cat would line his litterbox with the Nagig News."
To 10:45...Rahm would never allow billboard taxation. He would praise the billboard owners for posting Amber Alerts. And as we all know by now, no one loves children more than Rahm.
ReplyDeleteRuss Stewart just can't write, and he can analyze a student council race.
ReplyDeleteNo way our state legislators should vote to give tax breaks to stock exchanges. Tired of the corporate threats and blackmail.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm suppose to pay CME's share of taxes
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