On 11/30/2021, Senator Tim Scott questioned Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at a hearing for the Senate banking committee. Senator Scott highlighted the impact of persistent, surging inflation on the most vulnerable Americans resulting from out-of-control Democrat spending and called out the Biden administration for doubling down on their IRS bank reporting scheme, “Can you tell the American people today, Secretary Yellen, whether you still support any form of the IRS bank reporting…?”
SEC. YELLEN: I do support it. I think it’s important that the IRS have visibility into opaque income streams. And that’s an important way of improving tax of compliance—
SEN. SCOTT: Secretary Yellen, let me ask you a question. If you’re looking to catch tax cheats, why in the world would we start with something as low as $600 and then revamp it to $10,000? If you’re trying to find millionaires and billionaires, they’re not running lemonade stands—I don’t think they are—and they’re certainly not making minimum wage. So when you create a new approach to having the IRS search through our account records at our financial institutions, or compelling our financial institutions to forward our information to the IRS—
SEC. YELLEN: I’m sorry, it is not detailed information about what you’re doing in your bank account—
SEN. SCOTT: Aggregated information going to the IRS is the scariest proposal, and there’s no way that it has to be anywhere near the thresholds you’ve started with in order to find a way to take accountability for those complex organizations—
SEN. BROWN: Senator Scott, your time has expired. Secretary Yellen, please answer the question.
SEN. SCOTT: Chairman, if we’re going to have a conversation, we’re going to have to dialogue.
SEN. BROWN: Well you’ve had the dialogue.
SEC. YELLEN: We’ve worked carefully with Congress to narrow the scope of the reporting.