Easily one of the two or three most unpopular provisions of the $4 trillion Govzilla bill is the assault on Americans’ financial privacy via IRS monitoring checking accounts. Democrats pretended to remove that provision, but now we learn it is BAAACK.
Our friends at Americans for Tax Reform flagged this troubling exchange at a Senate hearing between South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen:
https://www.atr.org/biden-administration-still-wants-irs-snoop-your-bank-account
Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.):
“Can you tell the American people today, whether you still support any form of the IRS bank reporting requirements your department proposed earlier this year, which would provide the IRS with currently undisclosed taxpayer information with the purpose of targeting, essentially, every single working American at minimum wage or higher?”
Janet Yellen:
“I do support it. I think it’s important that the IRS have visibility into opaque income streams and that’s an important way to increase tax compliance.”
Senator Scott:
“If you’re looking to catch [millionaire] tax cheats, why in the world would you start with something as low as $600 and then revamp it to $10,000? Millionaires and billionaires are… certainly not making minimum wage.”
Yellen:
“The low reporting requirement was meant to make evasion more difficult by opening multiple accounts.”
How stupid do they think we are?
Compelling banks and financial institutions to share hard-working Americans’ information with the IRS is the Democrats’ scariest proposal, and there’s no way that it has to be anywhere near the low reporting thresholds that the Biden administration has proposed thus far. pic.twitter.com/aap6gxonF5
— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) November 30, 2021