Sen. Lummis Confronts Yellen Over IRS Plan to Force Banks to ‘Rat on Their Customers’ Every $600+ Transaction
“Bank customers are not subjects of the federal government. Banks do not work for the IRS. This is an invasion of privacy,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at a Senate hearing Tuesday, blasting the proposal to force banks to annually report customers’ account inflows and outflows of $600 or more to the IRS.
In addition to the privacy concerns raised by the proposal buried deep in the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending bill, the provision would place “a dramatic new regulatory burden” on banks, since they will “have to hire contractors to rat on their customers,” Lummis explained to Yellen:
“Secretary Yellen, speaking of horrified, my constituents cannot believe that you support a proposal to require banks and credit unions to report customer data to the internal revenue service for transactions of $600 or more. There are obvious privacy concerns for all Americans here.