Portman
Staff report
WASHINGTON, DC — On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and fellow Senate Republicans, including every Republican member of the Senate Committee on Finance and Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to abandon the Biden administration’s unprecedented proposal to expand the reporting of the private, confidential financial data of law-abiding Americans from financial institutions to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The administration’s proposal would force financial institutions to report customer information such as gross inflow and outflow information and transaction information directly to the IRS.
“This proposal represents a radical departure from existing reporting requirements associated with national security and actual taxable events,” the senators wrote. “Placing more requirements on financial institutions would not only adversely affect these institutions and their customers – who ultimately pay the price for compliance costs – but it would also inundate the IRS with layers of new paperwork and taxpayer data that is either redundant or irrelevant to improving federal tax compliance, as account inflows and outflows are not taxable events. Simply flooding the IRS with more data and burdening taxpayers, financial institutions, and already overwhelmed IRS service centers with more paperwork is of questionable value, especially when the IRS does not effectively use data already in its possession.”
The letter was led by John Thune (R-SD), Mike Crapo (R-Ind.), and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and was also signed by Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), John Boozman (R-Ariz.), Richard Burr (R-NC), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), John Hoeven (R-ND), John Kennedy (R-La.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Michael Rounds (R-SD), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Tim Scott (R-SC), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).
