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IRS Wants Your Bank Statements
How do you fund a $3.5 trillion budget? The honest answer is, you don’t. Joe Biden knows this, but he thinks he can find some additional revenue by snooping through your bank statements.
As part of Biden’s The American Families Plan (A plan for families? How nice) there would be a requirement for banks to provide more information about your account to the IRS:
The President’s proposal leverages the information that financial institutions already know about the accounts that they house. Financial institutions would add information about total account outflows and inflows to existing reporting on bank accounts. Importantly, there are no added requirements for taxpayers. The IRS will be able to deploy this new information to better target enforcement activities, increasing scrutiny of wealthy evaders and decreasing the likelihood that fully compliant taxpayers will be subject to costly audits.
Sure, this might be what our Founding Fathers would have called an unreasonable search but it will happen with “no added requirements” to you, the taxpayer. What they would be asking from the banks is information about any transaction, incoming or outgoing, of $600 or more. As we have been told over and over again, the rich do not pay their fair share (whatever that means). Now we know that anyone who is dealing with sums in the $600 range is obviously some rich fat cat looking to ripoff the IRS.
There are more than a few issues here. The first is, what right does the government have to gather all of that information without a warrant? And what else might that data get used for? So, constitutionality could be a potential issue. Then there is pure logistics: This is a huge reporting burden on banks and, no doubt, smaller ones couldn’t afford to do it.
While this is touted as a way to get better voluntary compliance, the data would also be used for audits. The Left loves to play up class warfare, but they also know that truly rich individuals can afford better accountants and lawyers than the government can. Going after them involves cost and potential risk. However, with a $600 threshold, plenty of not-so-rich people could get called in for audits. Without the means to fight, many smaller taxpayers will pay what they’re told regardless of the merit because they can’t afford to put up a defense and don’t want to risk any further penalties. In other words, the IRS will pressure them into surrendering . . . but it is all about American Families.
Published in General
This is an illegal search under the guise of a government regulation. I shudder to think my bank is going to notify Uncle Sam when I write a $700 check for a new appliance . . .
And given inflation, you’ll be spending twice that much on your groceries for the week.
The government already goes after small businesses which make deposits of $10k or more by assuming they’re some kind of drug dealer or mobster.
It would have been better to object back in the 90s, when Clinton crammed massive new disclosure regulations through in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. Now it’s like the joke that ends with the woman saying, “What do you think I am?” and the guy responds, “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”