WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) today cosponsored the Tax Gap Reform and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Enforcement Act. The legislation, which was introduced in the Senate by Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), would protect the American people from Democrats’ efforts to hire an army of IRS agents charged with snooping on taxpayers’ bank accounts and surveilling the public’s everyday expenses. Democrats have proposed that the IRS monitor individuals’ personal bank accounts for transactions as small as $600.

“President Biden is grasping at straws to fund his partisan tax-and-spending spree. This includes attempting to dramatically expand the size and scope of the IRS so the agency can aggressively monitor the public’s private finances. This legislation would ensure there are guardrails in place to protect Nebraskans from an invasion of their financial privacy,” said Sen. Fischer.

Nebraska State Treasurer John Murante joined 22 other financial officers from across the country in a letter opposing the Biden’s administration’s plan. The letter called it “one of the largest infringements of data privacy in our nation’s history.”

 

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Under the guise of closing the “tax gap,” Democrats are seeking to increase IRS funding by a massive $80 billion over the next 10 years to expand “enforcement and compliance activities” at the IRS, and to create a “comprehensive financial account information reporting regime,” under which gross inflows and outflows of taxpayers’ financial accounts are reported by financial intermediaries to the IRS, effectively acting as IRS agents.

Key provisions of the Tax Gap Reform and IRS Enforcement Act:

• Stop Excessive Snooping: Prohibit the IRS from using funds to excessively monitor the inflows and outflows from individuals’ and small businesses’ bank accounts. 
• Tax Gap Reform: Requires timely, annually-updated information on tax gap estimates in coordination with the Joint Committee on Taxation.
• Taxpayer Protection: Prevents the IRS from targeting Americans for their political and ideological beliefs, codifies President Biden’s pledge to not increase audits of taxpayers making less than $400,000 per year, and prohibits the establishment of new bank reporting requirements.
• Smarter Enforcement: Requires the IRS to use existing data and tools to improve its corporate audit selection process and increase enforcement against high-income non-filers.
• Closes the Expertise Gap: Creates an IRS enforcement fellowship pilot program to assist with the agency’s most complex audits and case selection decisions.  Before hiring thousands of new agents, Congress should test the effectiveness of increasing expertise in a targeted way.

Additional Senate co-sponsors of Sen. Crapo’s legislation include Sen. Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Sen. Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. Boozman (R-Ark.), Sen. Braun (R-Ind.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Sen. Cotton (R-Ark.), Sen. Cramer (R-N.D.), Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Inhofe (R-Okla.), Sen. Lankford (R-Okla.), Sen. Marshall (R-Kan.), Sen. Moran (R-Kan.), Sen. Murkowski (R-Alaska), Sen. Risch (R-Idaho), Sen. Rounds (R-S.D.), Sen. Rubio (R-Fla.), Sen. Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. Thune (R-N.C.), Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Sen. Wicker (R-Miss.), and Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)

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