In an official press release Tuesday, Tennessee Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced that he and 100 Republican colleagues sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, expressing their frustration over a recent IRS data collection proposal to increase tax information reporting requirements on financial institutions.
The proposed measure would require financial institutions to report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service on any bank account with a balance of more than $600. The Treasury Department says the proposal for extra data is being sought to target high earners who underreport their tax liabilities.
The letter sent by Republicans reads, “The recent spending proposal to include new tax information reporting requirements for financial institutions would not only impose significant compliance costs on our banks, credit unions, and related financial institutions that have served as the backbone of this economy these past 18 months, but also infringe on the privacy of millions of Americans.”
In his statement, Representative Green said, “I am disgusted by this scheme. This unnecessary data collection effort is inappropriate and will place more undue burdens on the American people and more regulations within an agency already infested with bureaucratic red tape.”
He went on to say, “This proposal would also create a tremendous amount of compliance costs for financial institutions – costs the American people, not Congress or bureaucrats, will have to pay. Creating such a massive database is like an invitation to bad actors and will threaten the privacy and security of Americans’ financial data.”
The letter was also signed by Tennessee Representatives Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01), Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04), Tim Burchett (R-TN-02), David Kustoff (R-TN-08), and Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN-03).
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to kaitlinhousler.reports@gmail.
Background Photo “IRS Building” by Joshua Doubek. CC BY-SA 3.0.
