Biden Administration Pushes Congress to Require Banks to Turn Account Info Over to IRS

The Biden administration is pressuring lawmakers to enact a controverisal plan requiring banks to turn over to the Internal Revenue Service detailed information about inflows and outflows of almost all American bank accounts.

The result would be the collection of detailed data about the bank transactions of tens of millions of everyday Americans.

The risks of such a database were highlighted last year when the leftwing investigative journalism website Pro Publica said it had “obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.”  If this proposal had been in place at the time, Pro Public might also have data on bank credits and debits.

In other words, even if the IRS cannot effectively analyze the data, just the fact that it has it might persuade Americans to report income that might have gone unreported.

Yellen claims in her letter that although the IRS would receive bank information on Americans of all incomes, the proposal is aimed at collecting more taxes from the wealthy.