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By Elizabeth Hester

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration’s proposal to tax financial firms may cost JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. more than $1.5 billion each, hinder the industry’s recovery and stifle investor interest in bank stocks, analysts and investors said.

“This is not conducive to an investor-friendly environment,” said Peter Sorrentino, who helps manage $13.8 billion at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati. “Profit will be hampered by this tax. It keeps the industry hobbled and it never gets healthy or out from under the thumb of the government.”

Bank of America, the largest U.S. lender, would owe $1.53 billion, or 18 cents a share, while JPMorgan, the No. 2 U.S. bank, would owe $1.52 billion, or 38 cents a share, according to a report today by Wisco Research LLC analyst Sean Ryan. The tax would amount to 22 percent of Bank of America’s expected 2010 earnings per share and 12 percent of JPMorgan’s, Ryan wrote.

“Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said in Washington yesterday after a hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. “All businesses tend to pass their costs onto customers.”

The two lenders, along with Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., were among the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. The fee would help defray costs to taxpayers of the $700 billion program. Citigroup would owe $1.37 billion, or 11 cents a share, while Goldman Sachs would owe $1.16 billion, or $2.01 a share, Ryan estimated.