September 10, 2021

Recently, the Biden administration released a proposal to increase tax revenue through a more comprehensive collection of financial information on customers within the banking system. If approved, financial institutions would be required to report all financial information on accounts with inflows/outflows or balances above $600 over the course of a given year.

Banking associations across the nation are deeply opposed to the proposed legislation and Independence Bank shares the same concerns. We have invested heavily in policies, procedures, technology and other safeguards of your private information. We are concerned that sharing this information will put our customers’, along with all financial institution customers’ information at risk.

At a $600 threshold, this proposal would effectively require ALL financial institutions to send ALL financial transaction information on ALL of their customers to the IRS.

In addition to your privacy concerns, this will require tremendous expenditures by financial institutions to comply with the law. Ultimately resulting in higher cost to millions of Americans with nothing to show for it.

Further, we fear that many customers will migrate to unreliable and highly vulnerable methods for transacting their business. Not necessarily because they are engaging in illegal activity but because they simply don’t believe that the government has a right to access their private information.

If you share these same concerns, please contact your legislators and ask them to oppose this legislation.