Gerstner Says Short-Term Gains Should Be Taxed at 80%

(Bloomberg) -- Louis Gerstner, the former International Business Machines Corp. chief executive officer, said that short-term investment gains should be taxed at 80 percent as a way to counter the culture of greed on Wall Street.

“If you buy something -- a stock or a bond -- in the morning, and you sell in the afternoon, the tax probably ought to be 80 percent,”

said Gerstner, also a former chairman of Carlyle Group, the world’s second-largest private equity firm.

“If you hold it for six months, maybe it ought to be 60 percent,”

Gerstner told Bloomberg Television.

Selling an investment after five years should carry a zero rate

“to try to get the incentives for investment to go back to being a true investor and not a trader”

[Here here.]

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