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Electronic Transaction Reporting Slipped Into Senate Bill
StealthyRoid writes "The Senate mortgage bill proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd (who was the recipient of a sweetheart deal on his mortgage from Countrywide, one of the beneficiaries of the bill) includes an attempt to sneak into law a requirement that all electronic payment processors send detailed transaction data to the federal government. The proposed law contains an exception for businesses with fewer than 200 transactions or a total value less than $10,000. Quoting FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey (former House majority leader) from the article: 'This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking.'" This is the same bill that contains a controversial provision to fingerprint all mortgage brokers.
The White House is planning on vetoing it.
I keep hearing this "sweetheart deal" thing about Chris Dodd. You know what the actual deal is? A 30 year AR mortgage intro'd at 4.5%. All that means is the man had good credit and timed his purchase well. It's not like that is out of the range for mortgage rates. When I first heard it, I was thinking a no interest mortgage or something like that. Instead, he's paying almost 5%, like the rest of us.
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Crudely Drawn Games
more reported income, so more taxes paid?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Dodd got a break on 2 of his home loans, and because of him taxpayer money is used to save a troubled lender. While he's at it he's helping all lenders better measure risk for new loans by giving them an ability to look into every aspect of consumer's credit. Does this guy have any shame?
Look kids, it's been a fun free ride and all, but if you think the government isn't gonna tax transactions once it figures out HOW to get at those transactions, well, ha ha ha. Sure. Okay.
They take the money you earn while working for a living and use it for corporate welfare and bailing out rich bastards who gamble and lose, so how long do you think they're gonna watch billions of dollars bouncing around the Interwebz before figuring out a way to dip their collective hand in there too?
As for the "freedom watch" website from TFA - you may wanna check out the rest of the site before you send any large donations.
Efforts to regulate carbon dioxide are an attempt by the global Left to gain control of the U.S. economy. lolwut?That which does not kill us makes us... st
As usual, the summary is pretty wrong. The "detailed transaction data" of the summary consists of "the annual gross amount of reportable transactions" according to the Senate Bill Summary as quoted in the article - the only information which is less detailed is no information whatsoever. So on the face of it this isn't the intrusion that it's being made out to be.
The US House of Representatives has internal rules governing the germaneness of amendments (that is, amendments to bills must be on-topic). The Senate has no such rules, so lots of stuff gets introduced there.
According to countrywide he got .5 off his rate because he was a US Senator. He knowingly accepted the VIP designation then tried to claim he thought it meant nothing? He serves and has served on various boards which have some power over this industry? Perhaps his party affiliation is saving him. I bet it is.
Read up on it, http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/06/12/Countrywide-Loan-Scandal
By lowering his rate they effectively handed him $60,000. In other words, Congressmen don't play by our rules. Their ability to regulate the industry means they intimidate without having to lift a finger. Considering his role in this bill and the fact he takes money from Countrywide for his reelection makes the whole thing stink.
and people wonder why crap like this little transaction law slips in. These guys are always slipping stuff in and out trying to avoid our knowledge of what they really do.
Dodd is a crook. He is a liar. He was simply caught and now is trying hide from it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
What this REALLY means is that *ALL Data* will be collected, but PRESENTLY only data for more than $10k or 200 "items" will 'count' (they can and probably will easily pass some bill amendment to remove this threshold).
Obviously, this implies that all of the data will be collected in full anyway, and when you individually hit $10,000.01 or 201 'items' it will meet some automatic threshold and exit their buffer and your transaction are suddenly officially counted in the IRS databases... Great!
Anyone RTFA and notice that this is REALLY about New Data collection on the Taxation of Internet Transactions hidden inside a "Housing Bill"?
I say this because the data "will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee". I also liked this entry in the full bill summary: "Lenders must document and verify borrowers' income with the IRS." (And I thought THREE independent Consumer Credit Reporting bureaus were sufficient, but NO! now we must directly involve the IRS too for every purchase over $10k)?
Read it for yourself: http://rpc.senate.gov/public/_files/L62HR3221Houseamendments0618SN.pdf
I do commercial tax prep for an unnamed company, and this is spot on. In 2004, the IRS testified before congress about where they thought the most major tax fraud cases were. The IRS's estimates were that a specific group of Small/Home business filers (the ones using schedule C with just a normal private citizen's 1040/1040A, and not using the commercial tax form 1041 and all the quarterly reporting forms they would have to use if they had employees) were responsible for about 100 billion in tax fraud every year.
Second place was false filings for the Earned Income Credit, with about 9 billion a year projected loss.
Congress directed the IRS to focus on the second case first. Some of us saw that cynically - I've heard several fellow tax pros describe it as a Republican dominated congress and executive branch, focusing on the group that doesn't vote or votes Democrat, rather than a larger group that tends to vote and contribute republican. Congress adopted a new set of tax rules that included the "Uniform Definition of a Child (UDC)" rules and told the IRS to go to town.
Other people, perhaps more charitably, noted that going after the smaller group also tended to catch a lot of dead-beat dads, and was much, much easier to implement. Over the last three years, congress and the tax courts clarified the rules on a lot of business related deductions such as de minimus employee benefits, and cleaned up the tax code re. small business filers. Some significant cases made it through the tax courts during this interval, and my own estimate is the IRS is in a much better position to go after their #1 on their top ten list than they were, and maybe it will start happening. Whether there's a connection to which party is in power is at least debatable.
Who is John Cabal?
Note the last line from TFA:
"Back-up withholding provisions apply to amounts paid after December 31, 2011. This proposal is estimated to raise $9.802 billion over ten years."
They don't (yet) give a damn WHAT you purchase. The whole idea is to let the tax man get at all those small transactions that presently tend to go unreported as income.
Of course, the unintended consequence of recording what you buy has its own issues, which fall under "general privacy". Nothing to hide? Do you really WANT everyone to know you bought S&M toys??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It's pretty much the same way with most of the American media.
Well, media is ultimately run and owned by human beings and it is human nature to hold those people who subscribe most closely to your values system in higher regard.
Speaking as an "outsider" (Canadian), American politics seems dominated by two parties that operate by the very same principles (only the logistics/details differ), i.e. the Republicans and Democrats are two different piles of the same stinky, steamy old crap. Republicans are beholden to Big Oil and big corporate conglomerate manufacturers, especially those with rich defense contracts (Boeing, and so forth). This all leads to the perception of the Republicans as neo-imperialist war-mongers out to secure oil-producing colonies to feed the machines of big oil and military, since the political donations/kickbacks there are the richest. The "Farenheit 911" movie plays this up to almost ridiculous levels whilst Republican loyalists deny it all, but the truth is somewhere in the middle: Bushites aren't out to take over the world and set up an evil empire, but their affiliations with oil and heavy industry corporations do have some degree of undue influence on their policies.
Democrats, however, should not sit smug and superior because they behave every bit as distastefully as Republicans. Democrats, to me, are the "Hollywood party". Big Media is owned by Democrat supporters, and as such Democrats can most easily control the message. Yean yeah, I know there is Fox News and characters like Glenn Beck on CNN and the more "left" Democrats always trot out those examples, however for every Fox there are several New Your Timeses out there. Democrats get to control the mainstream message/tone and get more Hollywood campaign dollars and in exchange the big media conglomerates get more of their agenda through into law.
Rather depressing choice you have in the US it seems. Vote for the Elephants and you get four more years of sending soldiers out to "keep Iraq free" and wiretaps and tracking electronic purchases and all sorts of "war on terror" laws to protect us all--supposedly. Vote for the Asses and you can bet that they'll ensure the path to RIAA/MPAA/Hollywood obsolete-business-model-protection legislation is smooth and paved with gold.
Perhaps y'all should try voting for other parties or independents...
Except that that's not even close to what's happening here. Under this proposal, your merchant bank sends you and the IRS a total amount, not every transaction.
They feds don't need to know who you called in order to collect their taxes, so they shouldn't get the info. Nor do they need to know whether you're selling copies of Playboy or of National Review from your online bookstore, and they won't get that info. They just get a notice from your merchant account bank that "Arccot did $17,654 in business charged through us last year."
If the Feds were tracking every charge, hell yes, I'd say it's time to break out the torches and pitchforks. This, though, is pretty uninteresting.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Fair enough.
How about CNN and William Jefferson
Or, even better, ABC News' slide show on POLITICAL SCANDALS?
Summation on the ABC Slide show from NewsBusters:
Then there is the case of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D). The Today Interview completely IGNORED his political affiliation.
Heck, just go to Newsbusters.org, hit the search feature and put in "Republican, Scandal" or "Democrat, Scandal" You will find HUNDREDS of articles and links to media outlets that back me up.
I'm not trying to claim that either Republicans or Democrats are more corrupt, they both are to varying degrees. The point is though, when you have a National Media ACTIVELY covering up for ONE side, it unevenly loads the presentation of the parties and ultimately, skews elections.
Personally, I think that the template for presenting politicians in ANY news story in ANY media outlet should automatically be [title] [name, first, last] [political party affiliation]. Just automatically, without regard to anything else. Not that I expect it will ever happen. That would be too honest.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
The vast majority of the "R" IDs are because members of Congress are traditionally identified by their party affiliation. Other politicians (President, Speaker, Mayor, Governor) are not. There's nothing nefarious about this, that's just how it's done. Unfortunately, the Republicans long-standing dominance of Congress means they are overrepresented in that body's annals of corruption.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.