Biden administration proposal would require enhanced scrutiny of bank and investment accounts

Maybe not proactively. But I assume the government can easily pull your ChexSys report if they feel it’s necessary. Perhaps even without a warrant.

Just as a data point… could you share how many bank accounts do you have? I didn’t realize Chexsystems tracks that info; I thought they were concerned with negative reports only.

I don’t know the exact number . . . it’s well in excess of twenty.

But I am certain of the following:

Chexsystems concerns itself with a WHOLE LOT more than just negative aspects of a person’s banking.

That was part of my thinking in posting here. I don’t worry about the government becoming aware of negative stuff, cheating etc., related to my banking relationships. There is no negative stuff, quite frankly.

But importantly, the government does not know that any more than that credit union did. And my banking relationships are . . uh . . shall we say quite active. :wink:

Would the government, privy to all my banking information, maybe think where there’s smoke there is fire? This is not a prospect I would welcome, nor should anyone else in my view.

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Chexsys doesn’t track accounts. He’s referring to inquiries, which they do track (like a credit report). And it’s often presumed that each inquiry represents an attempt to open a new account.

Otherwise, your Chexsys report is negative info.

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Just got an email from one of my credit unions about this. Looks like the NCUA is against this which makes sense.

LOL. You must have not seen your Early Warning report :joy:. If you think Chex is intrusive, you’d better take some anxiety meds well in advance of reviewing EWS. In fact, I don’t remember seeing transactions in Chex, but I did see transactions in EWS. But I haven’t pulled those reports in 2-3 years.

Free consumer reports thread here.

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Headline - “Democrats plan to scale back bank reporting limit” due to Republican opposition

After a backlash, the new proposal will instead require the provision of additional information for accounts with more than $10,000 in annual deposits or withdrawals, a measure Democrats have been considering for weeks but have not formally endorsed, the people said.

The revised version of the bank reporting proposal will also weaken its scope by exempting all wage income from counting toward the $10,000 threshold withdrawal, intending to ensure it applies to only larger account holders, the people said.

“I don’t know why they thought $600 would be a good number. $10,000 is definitely an improvement,” said John Koskinen, who served as commissioner of the IRS under both President Obama and President Trump. Koskinen said the threshold should be raised even higher to a number like $50,000. “The vast majority of people won’t be affected, but it will pick up more than just the idle rich.”

Democratic aides in both the House and Senate are still skeptical whether the bank reporting requirement will be included in the final version of Biden’s Build Back Better package, even with the changes.

But opposition to the measure is not limited to Wall Street, and has extended to community banks influential with much of the congressional Democratic caucus.

Republican attorneys general in more than a dozen states have written Biden and Yellen saying the plan is “unacceptable, illegal, and contrary to the well-founded constitutional principles against illegal searches and seizures.”

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Moving limit to $10k cashflow sounds like a decent idea in terms of catch tax evasion that’s actually worth auditing. $600 was way too low. I also like the exclusion of wage income. That gets reported on W2s already, no sense in counting that. IMO they should also exclude other things like 1099-INT and 1099-DIV since the IRS gets that data already anyway. Since the idea is to catch under-reported or mis-reported income, just exclude things that are already reported by a employers, bank, brokerage, or other similar third parties. That’d makes sense to me.

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Agreed on excluding reported 1099-INT income, but DIV could be problematic for the banks unless there is already a standard way that this is tracked. When I get divs and CGs deposited it’s a mishmash of descriptions, but I suppose it could be tracked by brokerage. Which means banks have to keep up with all the brokerages out there.

That sounds like it’ll double the compliance effort required of the banks.

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That’s a good point. Banks would have to figure out what deposits are a wage income or not. In freelance contracts I’m doing - for which I get W2 if it totals >$600 over the year, the amounts vary all the time based on the specific contract, the frequency is not fixed either. I don’t know how that gets coded.

But looking at how many bank sign-up offer requirements are met by ACH transfers between your accounts at different banks being mistaken for employer direct deposits, that may not be an easy ask to comply with.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-10-000-irs-tax-dragnet-treasury-bank-account-reporting-audit-11634852734?mod=opinion_major_pos1

Backup link

The real political goal here is to create a mechanism for triggering audits—probably through an algorithm—so the IRS can rifle through all of a taxpayer’s business and other financial records.

Banks will also be in the awkward position of helping the government police their customers. Recall how liberals howled about the National Security Agency antiterror program that required telecom companies to share phone metadata with the feds. Now Democrats want financial institutions to help the tax collector track your cash flow. Vows of privacy at the IRS aren’t worth much after the recent leaks of taxpayer data to ProPublica.

The IRS already has enough data to go after the wealthy and genuine tax cheats. It wants to look at everyone’s bank account so its agents have another excuse to audit and squeeze more money from non-wealthy Americans.

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Manchin is apparently strongly against this IRS snooping provision, so there’s hope it gets cut. Lots more detail on tax policy, etc, below.

Manchin said he told Biden in the Sunday meeting that any such reporting requirement — even restricted only to accounts of $10,000 or more — would be a red line.

“I said, ‘Do you understand how messed up that is? To think that Uncle Sam’s going to be watching?'” he told Rubenstein. “And so [Biden] says, ‘I think Joe’s right on that.’ So I think that was going to be gone.”

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What’s worse to me is this ridiculous wealth tax on billionaires proposal. So let me get this straight - they want to tax unrealized gains on stock etc., which is absurd on its face and probably unconstitutional.
So does that mean when we have a bear market, they’ll get a big refund check? Because that’s the only way this stupid plan would have a minimal chance of making it.

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It’s been a long time since either party was fiscally conservative, and we have the trillions in debt to prove it.

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They’d get a tax deduction valid against future years unrealized gains as far as I’ve read.

There’s no question it’s a dragnet for unreported or misreported income And more specifically from small business, rental, and farm incomes since those are - from the IRS own report - the ones showing the least reporting and the largest tax gap.

It’s clear to me that they intend to use this as makeshift reporting for income streams that are not susceptible to accurate reporting like wages or investments held at financial institutions. Maybe they’re hoping that it’ll nudge some people into better compliance but if not, I’m sure it’ll be used to target audits.

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The Democratic snoops haven’t given up yet

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