The Patriot Post® · 'Fact-Checkers' Spin Biden's Proposed IRS Rule
Republicans have found an item in the Democrats’ massive $3.5 $5 trillion socialist spending bill that has put leftists everywhere on the defensive. That item — Biden’s proposed new rule that would give the Internal Revenue Service expanded authority to track nearly all Americans’ bank accounts by requiring financial institutions to report all account transactions of $600 or more annually — is proving highly unpopular with Americans.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has defended the proposed rule under the guise that it would help the IRS catch wealthy tax cheats. Furthermore, Yellen has downplayed Republican claims that this rule change would amount to an unprecedented violation of privacy.
Even Yellen’s assertion that the objective of the rule change is for the government to make up billions in lost revenue is itself a statement that presumes millions of Americans are guilty of tax fraud. Meanwhile, Congress just raised the debt ceiling yet again as the U.S. government fails to even try to hold in check its gross overspending, which heaps ever more debt onto the backs of the American taxpayer.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) recently rebuked Yellen for passing off the rule change as necessary while at the same time shrugging off the impact on privacy rights as essentially no big deal. “No amount of explaining will change the fact that this $600 reporting threshold is completely unacceptable, a massive government overreach, and gives the IRS data they can’t manage properly,” Lummis said. “Secretary Yellen is essentially implying the American people are regularly committing tax fraud. Throwing out ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ this rule would facilitate unwarranted snooping by the IRS.”
Cue the Leftmedia “fact-checkers,” who came running to the defense of the Biden/Yellen IRS rule. In reality, all they did is show once again that these self-appointed arbiters of “truth” are in reality nothing but leftist propagandists.
The “fact-checkers” took exception to the notion that the new rule would allow the IRS to see specifically what Americans are buying, while at the same time admitting that Biden’s proposed rule would in fact require banks to report all cash flow from accounts totaling $600 or more annually. In other words, their claim that Republicans are “mischaracterizing” Biden’s IRS rule amounts to a distinction without a difference.
Under Biden’s proposed rule, the IRS wouldn’t look at what Americans are buying, though it would be keeping tabs on how much money is flowing into or out of bank accounts if deposits or withdrawals exceed $600. So, in effect, the IRS will be surveilling nearly every single bank account, not merely targeting the wealthy, as Yellen disingenuously claims.
In fact, those most guilty of mischaracterizing Biden’s IRS rule are the Biden administration and congressional Democrats. They claim that this proposed rule is specifically designed to target wealthy tax cheats, when in reality it’s middle- and lower-income Americans who would most be impacted. Under this rule, the poor — those making $25,000 annually — are three times more likely to get audited by the IRS than the top 1% of income earners.
If Democrats were truly interested in merely targeting wealthy tax cheats, then this would not be the way to go about it. On the other hand, if the goal is to collect massive amounts of financial data on nearly every single American, this is exactly the type of rule one would seek to implement.