D.C. – President Biden has sparked nationwide outrage for his recent tax proposal that plans to bolster perhaps America’s most hated governmental institution: the IRS.
Biden’s proposal will force banks and other financial institutions to annually report customers’ account transactions that amount to $600 or more to the IRS. The policy would apply to bank, loan and investment accounts, and many have deemed it as massive governmental overreach and an invasion of privacy equated to the controversial Patriot Act.
The Biden Administration defended the plan in a memo, saying it requires banks and financial institutions to provide a “little bit of high-level information” to the IRS in order to give the loathed agency more information about wealthy Americans’ earnings.
However, many Americans and members of Congress are saying the policy is against one of the prime pillars that the United States was founded on: no unwarranted government surveillance of citizens.
“Unfortunately, Biden and his team have ignored, or sometimes celebrated, the violation of taxpayer privacy and want to create an intrusive IRS,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said in a statement.
Based on this attempt to dive deeper into Americans’ financial transactions, a group of Republican Senators are fighting back and have filed legislation to stop the proposal from going into effect. Below is an excerpt from the Republicans’ news release:
“Under the guise of closing the ‘tax gap,’ Democrats are seeking to increase IRS funding by a massive $80 billion over the next 10 years to expand ‘enforcement and compliance activities’ at the IRS, and to create a ‘comprehensive financial account information reporting regime,’ under which gross inflows and outflows of taxpayers’ financial accounts are reported by financial intermediaries to the IRS, effectively acting as IRS agents.”
As mentioned in the press release, the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats aren’t just pushing for the deeper monitoring of Americans’ bank accounts. They’re also fighting to increase the IRS’ funding by $78 billion for “enforcement measures”, for those whose accounts they find issue with.
“Many Americans are understandably concerned with the IRS’s long history of overreach and ideological bias,” Sen. Marco Rubio said in a statement. “Democrat proposals to dramatically increase IRS funding while engaging in new surveillance efforts pose a serious threat to taxpayers’ rights and privacy.”
“This legislation takes steps to ensure that taxpayers are protected,” the senator added.
Many groups have come out in support of the Republican-backed bill, including the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform and the Center for a Free Economy.
As the new proposal has unleashed immense backlash to both Congressional Democrats and the Biden Administration, both parties can expect a lengthy legal battle from all sides as they attempt to move forward with the policy.
