Biden wants to get into your bank account
We've long been used to the fact that banks and credit unions must report to the federal government any transactions greater than $10,000. This requirement goes back to 1970 when $10,000 was equivalent to around $70,000 today. The law is a way to track criminal activity such as bank fraud. But how would you feel if the government requires banks to report to the government — i.e., the IRS — every transaction of $600 or more? Well, if Democrats pass their $3.5-trillion American Families Plan, that's exactly what will happen.
WBNS, an Ohio affiliate of CBS, has a good summary of how the proposed government incursion into just about every American bank and credit union account would work:
Under the proposed legislation, "[f]inancial institutions would report data on financial accounts in an information return. The annual return will report gross inflows and outflows with a breakdown for physical cash, transactions with a foreign account, and transfers to and from another account with the same owner. This requirement would apply to all business and personal accounts from financial institutions, including bank, loan, and investment accounts, with the exception of accounts below a low de minimis gross flow threshold of $600 or fair market value of $600."
The measure, if approved, would begin in 2023.
So we can verify: yes, under President Biden's proposed legislation the IRS would have more information on financial accounts with more than $600.
For those of us who feel that the government, and its tech affiliates, have way too much access already to Americans' private information, this is one more way it can deprive you of privacy. And really, when one considers that the Supreme Court's entire Roe v. Wade justification for abortion was that the Constitution has an implicit guarantee of privacy, it's outrageous that the pro-abortion Democrat government wants to lay bare to the IRS every aspect of our financial lives.
Tucker Carlson had a brief segment about the proposed law, during which he and his guest pointed out (1) that it will drive people to cryptocurrency and (2) that banks hate the idea because (a) it will drastically increase their reporting costs and (b) they will lose customers to cryptocurrency. Heck, given that my current bank interest rate is almost zero, I can think of lots of places that will be safer for my money than a bank that is no longer a secure vault for my hard-earned money but is, instead, simply a holding area for the IRS to tromp around and pry into everything on which I've spent that money.
UPDATE: Real Clear Politics has an article from Rep. Warren Davis, an Ohio Republican, saying the $600 provision didn't make it out of committee.
Image: Bank vault door. Pixabay license.
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