The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) issued a statement opposed to a recent proposal by the Internal Revenue Service that would alter tax reporting requirements.
“While policymakers are proposing tweaks to Washington’s widely opposed proposal that would require financial institutions to report customer account information to the IRS, no amount of updating will salvage this misguided plan or quell the widespread public backlash it has generated,” ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said. “The proposed tweaks—such as raising the reporting threshold—would benefit hardly any taxpayers, make the policy more difficult to implement, and do nothing to address the proposal’s privacy, due process, and data security concerns.”
The ICBA leader cited a recent poll ICBA conducted along with Morning Consult that found 67 percent of voters oppose the proposal. Further, 64 percent said they do not trust the IRS to monitor their financial information.
“A bipartisan supermajority of Americans and more than 100 organizations representing small businesses clearly oppose the IRS monitoring bank account information, which Congress continues working to advance through a budget reconciliation package that requires only a simple majority to pass,” Romero Rainey said. “The IRS reporting proposal is an invasion of consumers’ privacy, a violation of Americans’ due process, a data security risk amid the agency’s ongoing tax return leak investigation, and a threat to bipartisan efforts to reduce the unbanked population by driving more Americans out of the banking system and toward predatory lenders. ICBA, community bankers, and voters across the country will continue opposing this proposal.”