Most of the major stock exchanges operate their electronic trading out of New Jersey. And a number of operators, including the New York Stock Exchange, are voicing their opposition to a proposal to impose a tax on high-frequency trades that is gaining ground in the state, having gotten the support of legislative leadership and the governor.
Speaking Sept. 11, Gov. Phil Murphy was widely critical of a report the NYSE is threatening to move several of its operations out of New Jersey should the state enact the financial transaction tax.
It calls for a quarter of a percent tax on every financial transaction in the state to be imposed on North Jersey server farms that process at least 10,000 financial transactions a year—translating into hundreds of billions of dollars in annual transactions.
Gov. Phil Murphy crosses the field at SHI stadium at Rutgers University in Piscataway where he delivered his revised Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Address on Aug. 25, 2020. – EDWIN J. TORRES/GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the NYSE would exit the state should the measure pass. To demonstrate its seriousness, it already plans to transfer operations out of the state from its servers in Mahwah to a Chicago-based server for the week of Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, which falls on the Sept. 30 deadline for a new state budget.
A number of other operators are voicing their opposition as well.
“The notion that we could all come together and say, okay, we don’t love this idea, but we’re prepared to give a little bit of blood to help us all get through this together in one piece for the next couple of years, I think that’s reasonable,” the governor said at his Sept. 11 COVID-19 press conference at the Trenton War Memorial.
But the governor warned that “we just can’t score it [the tax] in the budget because it’s got too much uncertainty to it.”
Murphy said his administration has been in talks with several of the operators.
