NYSE: Tax us and we’ll leave Empire State

The New York Stock Exchange may leave New York state if Albany imposes a transfer tax on stock sales, the president of the Intercontinental Exchange-owned exchange operator said on Tuesday in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

NYSE President Stacey Cunningham said she and 25 other representatives of New York’s securities industry sent a letter last Wednesday to state legislative leaders warning against the unintended consequences of imposing such a tax, which would ultimately be borne by investors.

“The New York Stock Exchange belongs in New York. If Albany lawmakers get their way, however, the center of the global financial industry may need to find a new home,” she said.

An NYSE representative declined to comment further.

The state is facing steep budgetary shortfalls due to the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting some state lawmakers to introduce a bill that would tax certain financial transactions.

The idea of a new transaction tax seems to have little support with the Governor’s Office.

When the topic came up at a January press conference, Budget Director Robert Mujica said a lot of ideas around such taxes “haven’t been fleshed out,” according to a copy of the remarks provided to Reuters.

Mujica pointed as a warning to New York to a financial tax that had been proposed last year in New Jersey, where many exchanges host their servers, and noted that the exchanges quickly mobilized to temporarily move their employees and trading activity outside the Garden State.