Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis tore into Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen
By Kelly - Oct 1, 2021
Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis tore into Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen on Tuesday for her backing of a Biden proposal to ask banks to hand over transaction data over $600 on individual bank accounts. ‘Do you need to know when they bought a couch, a cow?’ she demanded.
She added: “Bank customers are not subjects to the federal government. Banks do not work for the IRS.”
Yellen said that she disagreed with the senator’s assessment, and suggested that Lummis had misunderstood the idea.
Under the plan, Yellen said, banks would be required to turn over just aggregate inflow and outflow numbers annually to the IRS — and not “detailed transaction-level data.”
“Banks already report directly to the IRS the interest that they pay on accounts when it exceeds $10, and this is not a proposal to provide detailed transaction level data by banks to the IRS,” Yellen said.
This proposal, to include bank accounts with at least $600 or at least $600 worth of transactions, is aimed at helping the IRS more effectively target who it audits, says The Wall Street Journal.