CHARLESTON – The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce opposes an IRS reporting proposal the Biden Administration is trying to add to the budget reconciliation bill pending in Congress.
The proposal, if inserted and passed, would require banks to report detailed customer information to the IRS for any accounts that have over $600 in activity within a year.
“When we first heard about this proposal we frankly didn’t believe it, but it shouldn’t surprise anybody given that bad ideas are frequently all too popular in Washington D.C.," West Virginia Chamber President Steve Roberts said.
Roberts says the proposal is "a massive invasion of privacy into the lives of nearly every American and West Virginian." He said reporting requirements would include gross inflows and outflows on all accounts including deposit accounts, cash transactions and even transactions between owners of the same account.
"To suggest that this is a way to combat fraud is dishonest," Roberts said. "This isn’t targeted at people who may be underreporting their tax liability to the IRS, but collecting information on every single hardworking individual in the country. This is more like fishing with dynamite.”
Roberts also said the proposal jeopardizes the security of individuals’ important information. According to the Administration’s own Tax Compliance Agenda, the IRS experiences 1.4 billion cybersecurity attacks a year and has suffered multiple data breaches.
“I am urging all West Virginians to call their members of Congress and stress how important it is to reject this costly and potentially dangerous proposal," he said.