Big Bank Tax Faces New Hurdles

So, the big Wall street banks are paying out some of their biggest bonuses ever, which explains why they were in such a hurry to repay the TARP money. Now the President is considering levying a tax on some of these institutions to attempt to recoup some more of the taxpayer funds. Naturally, this has caused a stir among the financial industry experts, who say that a tax would “keep the industry hobbled“. Personally, I’d think that if the industry was so hobbled, it wouldn’t be in a position to pay such enormous bonuses, but I digress…

One analyst’s take, though, is right on point. At BusinessWeek.com, Sean Ryan, with Wisco Research LLC, said that “the reality is that most or all of this tax will be borne by customers”.  If this tax goes through, there is definitely no way that the banks will swallow these charges for themselves. The prospect of the same taxpayers who bailed out these banks possibly having to pay even more money to cover this tax is almost enough to make the administration back off. And now, there’s another possible obstacle.

According to the Huffington Post, the banks are considering challenging the legality of the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee in court, claiming that the tax would “unfairly single out and penalize big banks”. Well, boo-hoo-hoo…

Posted by on January 18, 2010. Filed under economic recovery,Money,National News,News and Opinions with Selena Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.