WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Republicans in the Senate are standing against President Joe Biden’s proposal to expand the reporting of taxpayer information from financial institutions to the IRS.
“It’s a stupid idea,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said.
Grassley and other Republicans call Democrats’ plan to expand reporting of financial information an invasion of privacy.
“They don’t want the peering eyes of the IRS snooping on them,” Grassley said.
The proposal, part of Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda, would require banks to provide data on accounts with annual deposits or withdrawals that meet a certain threshold.
“The vast majority of Americans have accounts that will go through $600 a year, and if they raise it to $10,000, it will still capture everybody,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said.]
Toomey says the IRS has a track record of discriminating against conservative organizations and doesn’t believe the collected information will be useful.
“They’ll just get flooded with [a] massive, massive number of individual and small business accounts, for which it’ll have a dollar amount that means nothing,” Toomey said.
The White House criticized Republicans, saying this proposal is meant to target the wealthy, not average Americans.
“We’re talking about high net worth individuals who are not paying the taxes they owe and that’s what this policy would propose to address,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) says Republicans aren’t looking out for the middle class.
“Every time anybody tries to say the rich should pay their fair share, the billions unleash their lobbyists who come around the capital like locusts,” Brown said.
With all sides still negotiating, the proposal may not make it into the final reconciliation bill.