by Andrew Trunsky
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Tuesday came out against an IRS bank-monitoring proposal, predicting that the provision would ultimately be omitted from his party’s spending package.
“I think that one’s going to be gone,” Manchin said at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
Democrats introduced the provision as a way to partially finance their budget. It would require banks to report the total amounts of money that go in and out of accounts where totals exceed $10,000, which Democrats said would better enable the IRS to catch people trying to evade taxes.
The original proposal applied to accounts whose inflows and outflows exceeded $600, but that was scaled back to the current amount, which excludes paychecks and government checks.
Manchin is not the only Democrat to express concern about the provision. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a moderate from Virginia, wrote this week that the proposal could “jeopardize my constituents’ rights to privacy without any clear tax law enforcement purpose,” adding that small and medium banks could face disproportionate burdens as well.
Manchin later Tuesday expanded on his remarks to Bloomberg News. “No one should be in anyone’s bank account,” he said.
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