US Treasury Department to monitor all US bank accounts over $600 [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

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

home.treasury.gov

50 pointsfrays24 comments

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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.

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?

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?

No, because Intuit is still going to keep lobbying against it.

Not sure why this is downvoted. This is factually accurate and a major factor in why we haven't seen tax reforms.

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.

Not sure what's going with your account but I upvoted you.

I logged back in just to do that. Downvotes should cost.

How has the influence of lobbying been counteracted in other cases?

In general, it hasn't. Unless there are at least competing interests with similar sized bank accounts or a _very_ strong and _very_ vocal preference from voters, lobbying wins.

We've legalized bribery in America, we just call it something else.

No. Most of the complexities in the tax system are due to tax incentives and exemptions that the tax payer needs to verify.

What percentage of Americans do you genuinely believe file non-standard taxes?

All I see is a potential "tax bill" system that would simplify the process for the vast majority of Americans, and the percentage of Americans who file non-standard taxes can continue to do so no different than they do already.

Have you seen the questions in a standard tax return? Lots of stuff the govt has to validate - are you blind, do you have dependents, etc.

If you wanted a truly hands off tax return you’d need to revamp a ton of the tax law.

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

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Good luck constructing additional pylons

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