Treasury defends IRS plan to track most bank accounts
CBSN
The Treasury is defending its proposal to track banking information for nearly all Americans, after pushback from the finance industry and Congressional Republicans made the proposal a subject of heated debate in Congress.
A senior Treasury official told CBS News that tracking a small amount of information for nearly every bank account in the U.S. would help the IRS spot high-income people who are skipping out on taxes. Tracking the information would also provide additional verification that low-income workers are meeting their obligations.
The Treasury's proposal has been criticized for a cutoff that appears exceedingly low — just $600 in a bank account, or a single $600 purchase, would be enough to trigger disclosure, according to an initial plan released in May. It now seems likely that number will rise to $10,000. But the financial industry claims that small business owners and independent contractors would be caught in a "dragnet" of surveillance — rather than the wealthy.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.