U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today reiterated his strong opposition to Democrats’ proposal to double the size of the IRS and monitor everyday Americans’ bank accounts in order to help fund the Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spending spree. In September, Thune led a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) urging him 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). Thune’s letter was signed by every Republican member of the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Thune’s remarks below:
“As you know, we've been saying for some time now, we have been criticizing and pointing out what a terrible idea the Democrats’ tax-and-spending spree is for the country and what a horrible vision that is for the future of America.
“And today, we want to focus on one particular element of that, and that is how it's paid for. And in particular, this proposal, which would double the size of the IRS, literally double the size of the IRS, and allow them to snoop into every American's transactions, bank transactions.
“And as has already been pointed out, this is something that is so sweeping, we've never seen anything like it before, where you're literally talking about an IRS dragnet across the bank accounts of every single American, or at least every single American who banks. Because as has been pointed out, any American who uses a bank account probably at some point is going to – with deposits and withdrawals – exceed $600.
“Even if it's $10,000, it's still going to capture thousands, millions of Americans with this.
“And so this is one of many really bad ideas in the Democrat proposal. But this one in particular needs to be killed for all the reasons that have been mentioned, and not the least of which is the huge invasion into Americans’ privacy.
“And something that, as Senator Moran pointed out, I've heard from, you know, lots of South Dakotans, thousands of South Dakotans, already about this particular proposal.
“But secondly, because it will double the size of the IRS, an agency which had been pointed out, has had problems keeping information secret.
“Huge leaks of massive amounts and volumes of individual private taxpayer information. And so it's got that component, you know, historic in terms of its sweep and invasion of, you know, people's privacy in this country, the shakedown that it would represent of American taxpayers.
“And finally, if successful, who ends up paying for it? Well, the Joint Committee on Taxation, which does a distributional analysis of all these proposals, has said in their analysis that about 75 percent of the revenue raised under this proposal would be generated by people making less than $100,000 a year. Only five to 10 percent of that revenue would be paid by those making more than $500,000 a year.
“So in other words, the Democrats’ suggestion that this proposal and the tax increases included in their plan won't hit lower income Americans, it's just false.
“I mean, this is a this is a proposal that will shake down average Americans in a way that they’ve never been shaken down before, and the burden of compliance with this is going to be borne by people in lower income categories.
“The tax revenues raised, and the Democrats are assuming literally hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue as a result of this, the majority of that up to 75 percent, borne by those making less than $100,000 a year.
“This is a bad idea. It should be destined for the ash heap of history. And I hope the Democrats will hear from their constituents like we have and come to the conclusion that doubling the size of the IRS and allowing them to literally go out and shake down millions of Americans and hit lower-income Americans with bigger tax bills is a really bad idea.”