WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and a group of Republican senators recently introduced the Stop the Nosy Obsession with Online Payments to strike the tax code provision inserted by the Biden Administration in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) that requires third-party payment platforms to report businesses’ gross transaction volumes totaling more than $600 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Prior to the ARP, payment providers were only required to report information when a payee had over 200 commercial transactions per year that exceeded $20,000. As a result of the new provision, thousands of small businesses will have to fill out 1099-Ks to provide their personal information to the IRS, despite the IRS’ poor history of safeguarding Americans’ personal data.
“The Democratic Party’s obsession with granting the IRS the ability to track every transaction from small businesses and individuals is a gross overreach,” said Senator Tillis. “This legislation would strike the provision Democrats included in their partisan American Rescue Plan and reduce burdensome regulations on small businesses across the country.”
Last year, Tillis joined several of his Republican colleagues in introducing the “Prohibiting IRS Financial Surveillance Act,” a bill to prevent the IRS from implementing Democrats’ plan to give the agency access to transaction information of virtually every American.
Background:
- Earlier this month, the Washington Examiner reported that third-party payment processors, like Venmo and PayPal, will be required to report these business transactions.
- Over the past year, Democrats have used the IRS to target conservative political organizations and wealthy Americans to further their political agenda.
- Although the effort ultimately failed, the Biden Administration attempted to force banks to report data on all bank accounts with more than $600 in annual transactions, which would have allowed them to pry even further into Americans’ lives.
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