Lankford Wants to Know Why the IRS Needs to Snoop On Your Venmo Account

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today questioned Daniel Werfel, the nominee to serve as the next Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, in a Senate Finance Committee hearing. Lankford questioned Werfel about his current service at the IRS, particularly in the aftermath of the Lois Lerner scandal of targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, which Lankford investigated when he served on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Lankford has been critical of how the IRS has already started this tax-filing season off with mixed messages as they “figure out” how taxpayers need to file, which is giving taxpayers even more of a reason not to trust the IRS.

Lankford also zeroed in on the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan that purported to “rescue” Americans by adding a provision for the IRS to snoop in Americans’ Venmo and Paypal accounts. Lankford has lead the way on making sure the American people know about the provision and on holding the IRS accountable for this intrusion. Lankford introduced the Stop the Nosy Obsession with Online Payments (SNOOP) Act, a bill to strike the tax code provision inserted by the Biden Administration in the American Rescue Plan that requires third-party payment platforms, such as Venmo and PayPal, to report businesses’ gross transaction volumes totaling more than $600 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Excerpt

On the IRS snooping into Americans’ Venmo accounts

Lankford: Part of the American Rescue Plan, and part of ‘rescuing’ America apparently, by my Democratic colleagues, was getting information about my Venmo transactions with my daughter to the IRS. So my daughter, she’s a great lady, occasionally will run to the store and will buy something and bring it home, and I will tell her, ‘Will you grab that at the store, and I will Venmo you to pay for that?’ I am quite confident that will exceed $600 over the course of a year of random things like that with our family. Those records are now going to go to the IRS because of the American Rescue Plan. Part of ‘rescuing’ America is getting that.

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