by Morgan Phillips at The Daily Mail
A group of 99 banks and industry groups wrote a letter to President Biden on Monday urging him to drop his proposal to hand over transaction data to the IRS, noting that they were not satisfied with simply raising the threshold from $600 to $10,000.
The organizations that claimed to represent business and financial interests urged the White House to withdraw support for the measure and find ‘more targeted measures’ to reduce the tax gap.
The proposal to hand over data on all aggregate inflows and outflows of accounts with more than $600 in total transactions drew sharp outcry from Republicans and banks alike, prompting Democrats to raise the amount to $10,000. But, the letter said that raising that cap amounted only to ‘cosmetic’ changes.
The banking groups lauded the administration’s ‘good-faith attempt’ to make sure all Americans pay the taxes they owe, but wrote: ‘our members, and the American people, believe that they have a reasonable right to privacy and this overly broad proposal to report gross annual inflows and outflows from nearly every account is disconnected from its purported narrow purpose of focusing government scrutiny on Americans with actual income above $400,000.’
‘The privacy concerns for Americans who pay their taxes and would be swept into this account reporting program are real and should not be taken lightly,’ the letter continued.
The letter was signed by a wide variety of groups, from the American Bankers Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Chamber of Commerce to the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, the National RV Dealers Association, the National Grocers Association and the North American Die Casting Association…
Continue Reading