A group of Republican lawmakers recently reintroduced the Stop the Nosy Obsession with Online Payments (SNOOP) Act.
The legislation stems from tax code provisions within the American Rescue Plan (ARP) requiring third-party payment platforms to report businesses’ gross transaction volumes totaling over $600 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
U.S. Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), John Hoeven (R-ND), John Kennedy (R-LA), John Barrasso (R-WY), James Lankford (R-OK), Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) serve as co-sponsors of the measure.
“The Biden Administration has proven relentless in its attempt to invade the privacy of Americans’ lives and finances,” Hagerty, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said. “It is regrettable that this Administration still insists on advancing their perilous and oppressive political agenda to the detriment of taxpayers’ privacy, heedless of the IRS’s failed track record of protecting Americans’ confidential data and the deep concern of the American people that they serve. It is past time we stand up for our small business owners and put an end to this egregious and unwarranted overreach for good.”
Before the ARP, payment providers were required to report information when a payee had over 200 commercial transactions per year exceeding $20,000, and note the new provision would require thousands of small businesses to fill out 1099-Ks to provide their personal information to the IRS.
“It is concerning to me that the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress are continuing to place heavier burdens on small businesses across Wyoming,” Lummis said. “The IRS has a history of unfairly targeting businesses they find distasteful and leaving private consumer information vulnerable to bad actors. The last thing we should give them is access to more of our financial information.”