Missouri Opposes Federal Overreach into Personal Finances

Missouri is once again taking a stand against excessive governmental overreach by the Biden Administration. Two weeks ago Governor Mike Parson joined several state governors in rejecting President Biden’s vaccination mandate for any business with over 100 employees.

On Monday, Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick announced that he has joined a coalition of 22 State Treasurers and state financial officers to speak out against new proposals from Biden Administration. These new rules would require financial institutions to turn over private citizens’ personal bank account information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) if they exceed $600 of inflows or outflows from the account.

“These proposals follow a troubling pattern of increasing government overreach on the part of the Biden Administration and the Democrats in Congress. Once again, they are not considering the potential impact on small businesses and our small community banks and credit unions—and if they are, then must not care,” Treasurer Fitzpatrick said. “The impact of these proposals touches millions of Americans—and puts their data privacy at risk. Not only that, it might discourage unbanked Americans from opening bank accounts, which is detrimental to their financial health.”

“We do not believe the federal government should give the IRS the unprecedented and unconstitutional power to peer into law abiding American citizens’ private financial accounts,” the state financial officers wrote in the letter. “This would be one of the largest infringements of data privacy in our nation’s history and is a direct assault on law abiding private citizens’ financial disclosures.”

The Biden Administration proposal, part of the American Families Plan, would create a comprehensive financial account information reporting system under which financial institutions would be required to report information on account inflows and outflows over $600. These reporting requirements will burden financial institutions as well as put sensitive financial data at risk and the IRS at a greater risk of cyber-attack.

“This would impact well over 100 million Americans who currently have a financial account. In the last year alone, over 127 million Americans qualified for the CARES Act which deposited funds in excess of $600 into their financial account,” the letter stated. “Funds deposited included $600 weekly boost in unemployment benefits from the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation Program (FPUC) for the 25 million Americans who lost their job during the pandemic, roughly $3,200 in Economic Impact Payments (EIP) and most recently Advanced Child Tax Credit Payments to millions of Americans.”

KPGZ News - Brian Watts contributed to this story