“Louisianians, and all Americans, are entitled to privacy, and Congress must stop unjustified tax policies that do little more than harass and track the personal finances of hardworking Americans.”
WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) today joined Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and colleagues in introducing the Stop the Nosy Obsession with Online Payments (SNOOP) Act, which would strike the Biden administration’s tax-code provision within the American Rescue Plan that requires third-party payment platforms to report businesses’ gross transaction volumes totaling more than $600 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
“President Biden’s administration is bent on weaponizing the IRS against hard-working, tax-paying Americans. Louisianians, and all Americans, are entitled to privacy, and Congress must stop unjustified tax policies that do little more than harass and track the personal finances of hardworking Americans,” said Kennedy.
“The Biden Administration has proven relentless in its attempt to invade the privacy of Americans’ lives and finances. It is regrettable that this Administration still insists on advancing their perilous and oppressive political agenda to the detriment of taxpayers’ privacy, heedless of the IRS’s failed track record of protecting Americans’ confidential data and the deep concern of the American people that they serve. Though Republican efforts to repeal these new requirements were ignored for two years, the Biden Administration took a politically-timed short-term step to save themselves from the consequences of their own actions, but merely delaying this intrusive provision is not enough; It is past time we stand up for our small business owners and put an end to this egregious and unwarranted overreach for good,” said Hagerty.
Prior to the American Rescue Plan, 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 Americans will have to fill out 1099-Ks and provide their personal information to the IRS, despite the IRS’s poor history of safeguarding Americans’ personal data.
Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are also cosponsoring the legislation.