The Rich Get Ignored While The Poor Get Their Financial Privacy Violated
Welcome to Joe Biden's ever-burgeoning surveillance state!

Matt Welch writes at Reason of government once again going after the most easy to victimize with "the idea that the IRS would scrutinize accounts with inflows and outflows as low as $600":

In the face of pushback from worried constituents and mobilized industry groups (commercial banks donated around $20 million to each major party's congressional races in 2020), Democrats have been talking about raising the reporting threshold from $600 to $10,000.

But even that higher level gives the lie to the relentlessly repeated progressive talking point that President Joe Biden's construction of a startlingly invasive financial surveillance state--or "American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda," if you prefer--will magically avoid inconveniencing all the lower-income people suddenly eligible to have their cashflow scrutinized by a money-hungry IRS.

Ten grand is about how much you make working full-time in New York City on the minimum wage for four months, for eight months at the federal rate. It's the average annual rent in West Virginia (the least expensive in the country), and less than half the average price paid for used vehicles in 2020. What $10,000--let alone $600--most decidedly is not is the preferred level of annual transactions among the tax-avoidant rich.

Yet that is how this surveillance is being sold on the left.

...As the estimated 9 million American living abroad can bitterly testify, financial institutions do not care much for having their innards exposed to the IRS, and so will either pass the compliance costs on to the customer or just jettison clients altogether. The 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), sold as a way to close the "tax gap" by soaking fatcats, instead brought in meager revenue while incentivizing record numbers of Americans to renounce their U.S. citizenship.

The Biden/Pelosi/Warren plan does not as of yet impose such steep self-reporting costs on individual taxpayers. To the extent that there are any details--many are being kicked down the road to future regulators--they have involved requiring banks and other third parties to cough up an annual number for inflows and outflows. But the negotiators have already agreed to Biden's basic setup of giving the IRS an extra $80 billion over the next decade to hire 87,000 new employees and build out a "comprehensive financial account reporting regime" that would intrude into previously untrodden territory (such as Venmo accounts and cryptocurrency), so I'd take the over on regular Joes and Janes seeing a noticeable increase in scrutiny.

Republicans are doing their best to sound the alarm (while the news media are doing their best to stress the "Republicans pounce" angle), but the fact is that without significant outcry about a complicated and hellaciously expensive must-pass monstrosity, some version of this vast new financial surveillance state is likely to get built. Those who value financial privacy are best off seeking it in another country.