As the State Auditor and State Treasurer of Mississippi, it’s our obligation to make sure your money is protected and Mississippi small businesses can thrive. For this reason, we are firmly opposed to the Biden administration’s proposal to increase surveillance of financial institutions and your bank account.
This summer, the Biden administration announced a plan to require financial institutions, like community banks and even Venmo, to disclose private, law-abiding citizens’ personal transaction history to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) if the account exceeded $600 of aggregate financial activity. After strong bipartisan objection to that plan, Congress ultimately rescinded the proposal. Even so, House Democrats inserted new provisions to dramatically expand the IRS, potentially preparing for increased monitoring going forward.
We remain committed to aggressively defending Mississippians from IRS monitoring plans like this for a variety of reasons. First, a proposal like this would cause people to leave the banking system. This means fraudsters and white-collar criminals will move further underground and become even harder to detect. The State Auditor’s office relies on close partnerships with banks to track and uncover criminal activity involving taxpayer dollars, so some investigations could become almost impossible if the Biden administration plan becomes reality.
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