6 ms·

US Treasury Department to monitor all US bank accounts over $600 [pdf]

50 points by frays 5y ago

greenyoda 5y ago
First of all, this only seems to be a proposal for actions that the Treasury could take in the future. The part about monitoring bank accounts appears on page 88 (the 94th page of the PDF document): > This proposal would create a comprehensive financial account information reporting regime. Financial institutions would report data on financial accounts in an information return. The annual return will report gross inflows and outflows with a breakdown for physical cash, transactions with a foreign account, and transfers to and from another account with the same owner. This requirement would apply to all business and personal accounts from financial institutions, including bank, loan, and investment accounts, with the exception of accounts below a low de minimis gross flow threshold of $600 or fair market value of $600. ... > Similar reporting requirements would apply to crypto asset exchanges and custodians. Separately, reporting requirements would apply in cases in which taxpayers buy crypto assets from one broker and then transfer the crypto assets to another broker, and businesses that receive crypto assets in transactions with a fair market value of more than $10,000 would have to report such transactions. ... > The proposal would be effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2022.
PrinceRichard 5y ago
Here's my proposal for taxes. Completely eliminate income tax and every other form of currently existing tax for individuals and businesses. Replace it with a small tax on all electronic transfers, like 1-2%. Compliance is offloaded to private institutions and the entire headache of preparing and filing taxes is eliminated, along with the thousands of pages of laws about and what is and isn't taxed and how much. This should also result in a significant decrease in federal revenue, which is an important part of the plan as well. I would cut the federal budget about about 90%.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  Most tax utopians rally around LVT. Transfer and transaction taxes are regressive. Reducing the federal budget greatly would cause a great economic contraction likely resulting in social and political chaos.
  - u801e 5y ago
    Could the regression be mitigated by requiring a minimum value of transactions to be tax free? More affluent people spend more, so they will go beyond the minimum.
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    Since you're boosting it here, do you have a link to any sort of analysis where the math works out on a land value tax? I totally get the philosophical attraction but I just do not see how you pull trillions of dollars out of that without some crazy outcomes. Land with a financial skyscraper handling the GDP of a small nation could have a lower 'unimproved' value than an acre with really nice soil, for example.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      The land with the skyscraper would likely be in the middle of a city, and would certainly be worth more than a random acre in a rural area no matter how good the soil is.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Wouldn't this lead to "off-chain" transactions where you keep all your money in your account, but trade around IOU that are not subject to that tax?
- joshenders 5y ago
  Good luck constructing additional pylons
- imtringued 5y ago
  If you are going to cut the budget by 90% why not start with how you are going to do that? Getting rid of the income tax is largely inconsequential in comparison.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    To get rid of 90% you would have to kill social security and Medicare. I don’t see that ever happening. In addition you would have to cut the defense budget, since that alone is more than 10%. I’d be on board with that, but again I don’t see it happening.
shostack 5y ago
Does this in any fashion help pave the way to a more modern tax filing system whereby the government tells you what you owe without today's current labyrinthine filing process like other countries have had?
- hypothesis 5y ago
  That’s not going to happen. Lots of people are making a buck on disfunction and overly complicated tax laws. Those same people know how to lobby lawmakers. Who’s lobbying for a simpler tax system?
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  No, because Intuit is still going to keep lobbying against it.
  - anm89 5y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted. This is factually accurate and a major factor in why we haven't seen tax reforms.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      Take a look at my comment history for the past 2 weeks if you want to see a bunch more unexplainable downvotes. I've also been repeatedly IP banned multiple times during the same period, sometimes even multiple times a day, which has never happened before. I don't spam requests to the site, and haven't changed my browsing habits a whit. I've emailed admin and they won't even acknowledge me as a human. It's pretty maddening, actually.
      - chrisbennet 5y ago
        Not sure what's going with your account but I upvoted you.
        WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
twirlock 5y ago
These people have virtually no interest in collecting taxes in comparison to their interest in creating criminals as a pretense for monitoring everyone.
literallyaduck 5y ago
I guess papers and effects doesn't mean bank papers.
stevespang 5y ago
Your papers please . . . .
dang 5y ago
I'm late to this, but the submitted title violated the site guidelines. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

50 points by frays 5y ago

First of all, this only seems to be a proposal for actions that the Treasury could take in the future. The part about monitoring bank accounts appears on page 88 (the 94th page of the PDF document): > This proposal would create a comprehensive financial account information reporting regime. Financial institutions would report data on financial accounts in an information return. The annual return will report gross inflows and outflows with a breakdown for physical cash, transactions with a foreign account, and transfers to and from another account with the same owner. This requirement would apply to all business and personal accounts from financial institutions, including bank, loan, and investment accounts, with the exception of accounts below a low de minimis gross flow threshold of $600 or fair market value of $600. ... > Similar reporting requirements would apply to crypto asset exchanges and custodians. Separately, reporting requirements would apply in cases in which taxpayers buy crypto assets from one broker and then transfer the crypto assets to another broker, and businesses that receive crypto assets in transactions with a fair market value of more than $10,000 would have to report such transactions. ... > The proposal would be effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2022.

PrinceRichard 5y ago

Here's my proposal for taxes. Completely eliminate income tax and every other form of currently existing tax for individuals and businesses. Replace it with a small tax on all electronic transfers, like 1-2%. Compliance is offloaded to private institutions and the entire headache of preparing and filing taxes is eliminated, along with the thousands of pages of laws about and what is and isn't taxed and how much. This should also result in a significant decrease in federal revenue, which is an important part of the plan as well. I would cut the federal budget about about 90%.

m0llusk 5y ago
Most tax utopians rally around LVT. Transfer and transaction taxes are regressive. Reducing the federal budget greatly would cause a great economic contraction likely resulting in social and political chaos.
- u801e 5y ago
  Could the regression be mitigated by requiring a minimum value of transactions to be tax free? More affluent people spend more, so they will go beyond the minimum.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  Since you're boosting it here, do you have a link to any sort of analysis where the math works out on a land value tax? I totally get the philosophical attraction but I just do not see how you pull trillions of dollars out of that without some crazy outcomes. Land with a financial skyscraper handling the GDP of a small nation could have a lower 'unimproved' value than an acre with really nice soil, for example.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    The land with the skyscraper would likely be in the middle of a city, and would certainly be worth more than a random acre in a rural area no matter how good the soil is.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
Wouldn't this lead to "off-chain" transactions where you keep all your money in your account, but trade around IOU that are not subject to that tax?
joshenders 5y ago
Good luck constructing additional pylons
imtringued 5y ago
If you are going to cut the budget by 90% why not start with how you are going to do that? Getting rid of the income tax is largely inconsequential in comparison.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  To get rid of 90% you would have to kill social security and Medicare. I don’t see that ever happening. In addition you would have to cut the defense budget, since that alone is more than 10%. I’d be on board with that, but again I don’t see it happening.

shostack 5y ago

Does this in any fashion help pave the way to a more modern tax filing system whereby the government tells you what you owe without today's current labyrinthine filing process like other countries have had?

hypothesis 5y ago
That’s not going to happen. Lots of people are making a buck on disfunction and overly complicated tax laws. Those same people know how to lobby lawmakers. Who’s lobbying for a simpler tax system?
actually_a_dog 5y ago
No, because Intuit is still going to keep lobbying against it.
- anm89 5y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. This is factually accurate and a major factor in why we haven't seen tax reforms.
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    Take a look at my comment history for the past 2 weeks if you want to see a bunch more unexplainable downvotes. I've also been repeatedly IP banned multiple times during the same period, sometimes even multiple times a day, which has never happened before. I don't spam requests to the site, and haven't changed my browsing habits a whit. I've emailed admin and they won't even acknowledge me as a human. It's pretty maddening, actually.
    - chrisbennet 5y ago
      Not sure what's going with your account but I upvoted you.
      - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

twirlock 5y ago

These people have virtually no interest in collecting taxes in comparison to their interest in creating criminals as a pretense for monitoring everyone.

literallyaduck 5y ago

I guess papers and effects doesn't mean bank papers.

stevespang 5y ago

Your papers please . . . .

dang 5y ago

I'm late to this, but the submitted title violated the site guidelines. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...