Treasury Department DEFENDS plan to have the IRS snoop on accounts with over ...

Treasury Department DEFENDS plan to have the IRS snoop on accounts with over ...
Treasury Department DEFENDS plan to have the IRS snoop on accounts with over ...

The Treasury department defended and IRS proposal generating widespread pushback to track data on accounts with over $600 in flow, arguing that congressional dialogue on it has been marred by 'misinformation.' 

'Opponents have elevated the pernicious myth that banks will have to report all individual customers’ transactions to the IRS,' Natasha Sarin, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, wrote in a blog post on the Treasury website. 

Instead, banks would hand over the aggregate inflow and outflow of an account. 

'Banks would add just a bit of additional data to information that they already supply to taxpayers and the IRS: how much money went into the account over the course of the year, and how much came out,' she said. 

'Opponents have elevated the pernicious myth that banks will have to report all individual customers¿ transactions to the IRS,' Natasha Sarin, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, wrote

'Opponents have elevated the pernicious myth that banks will have to report all individual customers’ transactions to the IRS,' Natasha Sarin, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, wrote

Republicans have said that the proposal amounts to the Biden administration peering into Americans' everyday purchases. 

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., asked Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen last month:  'Do you distrust the American people so much that you need to know when they bought a couch? Or a cow?' 

'I want to be able to tell cowboys in Wyoming that if they make a payment on their pickup truck or buy a saddle for their horse, they're not going to have an IRS agent along for the ride,' Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso said last week.

IRS chief Charles Rettig has said the US is missing out on $1 trillion in unpaid taxes every year. 

 Sarin claimed that audit rates would not rise for anyone making less than $400,000 'relative to recent years.'  

'The financial reporting proposals under consideration do not include any information about specific transactions or what taxpayers buy,' Sarin continued. 'The IRS will receive no information whatsoever, and will have no ability whatsoever, to track specific transactions under this proposal.' 

Community bankers are sounding the alarm on the tax proposal that would require banks to hand over transaction data on accounts with over $600 net inflow and outflow. 

In an effort to drum up cash to pay for a portion of the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan, Democrats proposed requiring banks to hand over the aggregate inflow and outflow of transactions on virtually all accounts - checking, savings, loans, investments - to the IRS, leading account owners to flood their local institutions with calls expressing privacy concerns.  

Paul Merski, executive vice president of congressional relations and strategy for the Independent Community Bankers Association, told DailyMail.com that the proposal could cause the amount of unbanked or underbanked in the US to take a nosedive. 

'Many of the unbanked are recently from other countries where they may have escaped a dictatorship-type government and don't trust government for good reason and this would scare more people out of the banking system,' he said. 

'We're afraid all that info going to IRS is an invasion of privacy,' Merski said. 'This is info that the IRS couldn’t demand from individuals

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