Wednesday January 25, 2023 – American taxpayers may have reason to rejoice as Republican lawmakers introduced the Stop the Nosy Obsession with Online Payments (SNOOP) Act on Tuesday. The bill, if passed, would put an end to the Biden Administration’s new requirement passed in the American Rescue Plan of 2021, for Americans to report online transactions over $600.

As reported here, The IRS recently announced a “delay for implementation of $600 reporting threshold for third-party payment platforms’ Forms 1099-K.” California Rep. Michelle Steel and Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty are leading this effort in their respective chambers of Congress, looking to nix this intrusive policy forever, which is a weaponization of government against hardworking citizens.

Americans have long been wary of the government’s ability to intrude on their personal lives and financial information. But this new policy would have required all third-party platforms to report all online transactions over $600 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This policy would leave no room for privacy between a citizen and the government.

The SNOOP Act would revert back to the old rules, where third parties reported amounts of $20,000.00 or more AND 200 transactions.

Attorney Steven A. Leahy reports on these developments on Today’s Tax Talk.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/snoop-scoop-new-gop-bill-would-put-stop-irss-600-online-reporting-requirement

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/irs-aims-cut-back-1099-211701325.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bill-to-abolish-the-irs-likely-dead-in-the-house-gop-lawmaker-predicts/ar-AA16JnrZ

https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2023/1/25/23571245/irs-policy-penalties-senior-citizen-monica-toth-supreme-court-jacob-sullum-column

Crypto-Tuesday January 24, 2023 – Money serves three purposes: medium of exchange, preserving labor value over time and measuring goods and services across an economy.

The promise of Crypto was to provide all three purposes. However, Cryptocurrency still needs acceptance from people in order to work as a medium of exchange like traditional currencies do. That’s why the El Salvador move looked so encouraging. Using Crypto as a medium of exchange, rather than a store of value. That experiment hasn’t worked…yet.

Governments around the world have ratcheted up regulatory controls on Cryptocurrency. Our own Department of Justice proposed three regulatory and legislative priorities for combating cryptocurrency crime, including amending the anti-tip-off law for financial institutions to include digital assets, strengthening penalties and broadening the application of criminal laws governing operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, and increasing limitations period to 10 years for all crimes that involve transfer of digital assets.

The White House also committed additional priorities such as aggressive investigations by SEC Chair Gary Gensler, as the SEC battles with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to be the regulatory king in the Crypto space.

Attorney Steven A. Leahy looks at the past, present and future of money on Today’s Tax Talk.

https://www.deseret.com/2023/1/22/23558962/cryptocurrency-blockchain-us-dollar

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/crypto-actors-face-increased-enforcement-spurred-by-doj-network