Work-Bites, Ray Rogers, Apr 23, 2025

It’s Time to End New York’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Stock Transfer Tax Rebate To Wealthy Wall Streeters

While infrastructures throughout New York State are crumbling and critical public services are grossly underfunded or non-existent, the message for years emanating from the offices of Gov. Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins is “now is not the right time.” Well, maybe now is not the right time for them but most certainly it is the “right time” for millions of suffering New Yorkers. In fact, it is long past time to pass newly revised Assembly Bill A1494-A (Phil Steck, chief sponsor) and Senate Bill S1237 (James Sanders, chief sponsor) repealing the NYS Stock Transfer Tax Rebate (STTR). Common sense, compassion, and fiscal responsibility demand nothing less.

Most New Yorkers are not privy to these bills that are languishing in the State legislature. From 1905 to 1981, New York collected a Stock Transfer Tax (STT) on corporate stock sales. The tax is miniscule, only about a quarter of one percent depending on the size of the transaction, but revenues add up on billions of sales annually. Astonishingly, since 1981 the state began giving back 100% of these badly needed revenues, now estimated to be $13-$20 billion annually or at least $52 million per trading day, to wealthy Wall Streeters.

New Yorkers pay up to 8.875% sales tax on most purchases ranging from household and personal care items to cars and electronics. Those taxes pay for critical public services from police and firefighters to schools, sanitation, healthcare, housing, transportation, public safety, and infrastructure repairs. So why is the state rebating billions of dollars collected from corporate stock sales back to wealthy financial institutions rather than applying those revenues to programs that promote social well-being for everyone?

Michael Kink, executive director of the Strong Economy for All Coalition on calling for the STT reinstatement pointed out, “For 75 years we raised billions and billions of dollars with this tax. It’s the money that funded SUNY. It’s the money that funded CUNY. It’s the money that funded Mitchell-Lama housing. All the good things that were built in mid-century New York were funded in significant part by this small sales tax on Wall Street stock trades.”

Why are repealing the STT Rebate bills not moving in Albany while the state, cities and towns are reeling from revenue deficits to fund critical public services? Why are the leaders of Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), Partnership for New York City (PFNYC) and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) vehemently opposed to repealing the STT rebate?

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