Senator Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin are being urged to oppose the Internal Revenue Service data collection efforts in the “Build Back Better” spending plan by Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee and West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore.
Yee and Moore sent a joint letter to Sinema and Manchin last week claiming that the proposed legislation violates the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and is a plan which they allege the citizens of their respective states “fiercely oppose.”
The two treasurers say they oppose the legislation, which they call the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) Snooping plan, would allow the IRS to collect all U.S. citizens’ personal financial activity, including deposits, withdrawals, and all transactions of $600 or more per calendar year.
“We believe that any proposal of this nature violates the Fourth Amendment and our citizens’ reasonable expectations of financial privacy. In recent weeks, our citizens have expressed overwhelming opposition to this proposal. In fact, recent polling has indicated more than two thirds of Americans believe this policy is a misguided governmental overreach,” stated the joint letter signed by Treasurers Yee and Moore.
“This IRS Snooping plan is a direct attack on law-abiding Arizonans’ personal banking activities and their freedoms protected by the United States Constitution. This piece of legislation is an outright overreach of government and is an invasion of privacy. I strongly urge Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema to oppose the legislation and protect the privacy of Arizonans,” said Yee. “This is the largest data mining exercise in United States history and directly affects the right to privacy of average Americans.”
Opposition to the plan has been stiff. In fact, opposition prompted Senate Democrats, according to the Wall Street Journal, to release a “revised proposal that raises the threshold for financial institutions to report to the IRS on individual accounts to $10,000 from the previously mooted $600. The proposal also tries to dodge the charge of snooping on Everyman by exempting wage income from “certain payroll companies” and Social Security checks.”