A strategy outlined by the Biden Administration’s American Families Plan, calling for financial institutions to monitor Americans’ bank accounts, prompted dire warnings from the Florida Bankers Association CEO Alex Sanchez today.
Sanchez warned that this scheme to potentially recover billions in lost revenue from “tax dodgers” would hurt small businesses and “kill our community banks.”
The American Families Plan is designed to “grow the middle class and expand benefits of economic growth to all Americans.”
With those expanded benefits comes the expanded challenge paying for it all. One of the “significant steps” proposed would “require financial institutions to report information on account flows so that earnings from investments and business activity are subject to reporting more like wages already are.”
While the specific disclosure requirements would ultimately be hammered out by the Treasury Department, experts agree they would include financial institutions informing the IRS about the size and frequency of deposits and withdrawals from private citizens’ bank accounts — some say on amounts as small as $600.
“Let me just simply say this will kill our community banks and hurt our regional banks in our country who are the main providers of capital for small businesses. While community banks only have 20% of market share, they give 50% of small business loans in our entrepreneurial society to small businesses where half of Americans work,” Sanchez said on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria.
“Having every [American’s] data sent to the IRS for every $600 withdrawal, deposit, moving in accounts — it’s unbelievably ridiculous. There are more efficient ways to do this by the IRS. Senator (Elizabeth) Warren herself to the commissioner said we need to get high-income tax evaders. Well, hire more auditors. There’s many more efficient ways to do this than to have every American’s data sent to the IRS for a $600 transaction,” he continued. “I hope moderate Democrats rule the day and tell the Biden administration this is totally unacceptable. Look, we want taxes to be paid. We want taxes to support our country. But there are more efficient ways of doing it than the intrusive violation of privacy of every American’s right for all their bank accounts. So there’s just a better way to do it than what the Biden administration is proposing.”