A proposal by the Biden administration and congressional Democrats to require banks and other financial institutions to send the IRS additional information about Americans’ bank accounts is another step too far on a road that the government should not be traveling at all — the conscription of private companies into warrantless government surveillance.
The proposed law would mandate financial service providers to track and submit to the IRS data on accounts with total annual deposits or withdrawals totaling more than $10,000, except for payroll or benefit deposits. This is a change, though not an improvement, from the original proposal requiring reporting of accounts with only $600 of activity.
The Biden proposal is at odds with the limits on government power that are spelled out in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
That means the government does not have an unlimited license to rummage through everyone’s desk drawers, or their electronic equivalent, to see if it can find evidence of a crime. It needs probable cause and a warrant to conduct a search.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed legislation that required banks to “know their customers,” building on the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act’s requirement for reporting currency transactions of $10,000, or any possibly related transactions that totaled $10,000. The purpose was said to be the need to disrupt the funding of terrorist attacks. The side effect was more paperwork and potential liability for financial institutions, more inconvenience for customers conducting legitimate transactions, and an erosion of privacy that previously had existed in the United States.
The Biden administration now wants to expand mandatory reporting to the IRS, claiming there is a “tax gap” of $7 trillion over the next decade, money that it says it must collect in order to pay for the rest of the president’s agenda. The Treasury Department characterizes this total as “unpaid taxes,” but anyone who has ever filed a 1040 form and experienced the complexity of the U.S. tax code might dispute whether those taxes are owed, or whether they are avoided through fully legal means. In any case, the government already has the power to investigate tax evasion. What the administration wants is the equivalent of warrantless surveillance of U.S. bank accounts.
Republicans are pushing back. Georgia Congressman Drew Ferguson on Wednesday introduced the Prohibiting IRS Financial Surveillance Act (HR 5586), which was quickly endorsed by CUNA, the Credit Union National Association. In a letter of support for HR 5586, CUNA said that the Biden proposal “would result in banks and credit unions turning over to the IRS sensitive account details that in and of themselves do not constitute taxable events. This would leave the IRS with a massive trove of personal financial data that would be used in a manner that is not detailed in the proposal. This is risky and dangerous.”
It also treads ominously on Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. House Democrats should drop their support for the Biden proposal, at any price.
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We saw what the IRS did to Conservatives under the Obama Administration, with the help of John Traitor McCain and my former Senator Carl Levin, with the IRS sending FBI agents to Conservatives houses. Of course the Lois Lerners of the world, the John Koskinnens of the world, McCain, Carl Levin and Obama were never punished. The elitists in society are never punished, are they?
Not unless we start going all FRENCH REVOLUTION on their butts…
How do you change— change the U.S. from a capitalist system’,
Into a Socialistic Democrat Party government controlled system. ??
1. Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people.
2. Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).
3. Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children and young people learn in schools and colleges.
4. Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.
5. Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take from the wealthy and give to poor. Until there are only the poor.
6. Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level.
7. Gun Control — Remove the ability for the people to defend themselves from the Government. (“Socialist Democrat Party State”)
8. Poverty — Increase the poverty level as high as possible. Poor people are easier to control and will keep socialists in power if they are providing everything for them to live. Encourage, protect and support multi-millions of illegal immigrants who are poor, uneducated and disease ridden.
9. Allow illegal immigrants to vote and hold government positions.
Do these look like the tactics of the Democrat Party??
This traitorous, dishonorable, dishonest, immoral, socialist Democrat Party has become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY!
Corrupt Liberals know that if you want the power to molest and control a child, you go where the children hang out, like the boy scouts or girl scouts or Sunday school. They also understand that if you want to molest their adult parents you go to where they keep the very personal property they hold in banks and formerly secure investments that defends them from corrupt incompetent governing like the type that took over 9 months ago. One more Prima Facie piece of evidence now openly dispayed on the part of the Democrats that proves their true intentions to take away your individual freedoms and powers to protect yourselves from THEM, ensconced in the Constitution. Hopefully they no longer have a packed court of yes nodding bobblehead Supreme Court Justices to back them up because when a corrupted Executive branch hooks up with a corrupted Congress the only checks and balances left to defend the rights and property of THE PEOPLE is the Supreme Court who now also has a target for packing, stacking and stabbing painted on the backs of their robes.
IF the left gets what they want done with the scotus, WE CAN KISS OUR RIGHTS good bye.
Of course they want that bank information, how else can they find out where the money is when it’s time for them to seize it? It’s getting close to this government being a total dictatorship with no rights given to the masses.
“The Biden administration now wants to expand mandatory reporting to the IRS, claiming there is a “tax gap” of $7 trillion over the next decade, money that it says it must collect in order to pay for the rest of the president’s agenda.”
Won’t cost a dime? Zero dollars? Looks a lot like it’s going to cost at least $7 trillions.
“Taxes….It’s not theft if you have to fill out a form.” – The People’s Cube
TAXATION IS THEFT!
WE need more folk to realize that.