A.G. Gancarski
Gov. Ron DeSantis bemoaned “bad juju” from the Joe Biden administration in reaction to proposals for a more active federal role in tracking transactions and driver data. But he may have left out context while doing so.
DeSantis offered on Friday unsolicited criticisms of proposals to have the Internal Revenue Service track transactions exceeding $600 and mileage for a potential tax, as attempts to have the federal government “snoop” in people’s lives.
“With what’s going on in Washington, they want to take every bank account of $600 and snoop on your bank account! We need to stop that. That is totally unacceptable,” DeSantis said Friday in Northport.
There are apparently caveats to this read. The Associated Press bills the proposal as a “policy aimed at reducing the tax gap and improving tax compliance.”
“The statement that has been making the rounds that the IRS will be monitoring every transaction is extremely misleading,” said Samantha Jacoby, a senior tax legal analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to the AP. “The only thing that the IRS would have access to is two new numbers, total gross inflows and gross outflows for the whole year.”
DeSantis also took issue with another controversial legislative proposal, a so-called mileage tax study that raised surveillance concerns for the Governor. That is already in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the Senate. It still needs to be passed by the House of Representatives.
“There was also one of the bills where they wanna, and I think it’s a pilot for now but you know they expand it. They want to track how much mileage you’re doing on your car and tax you. So how the hell are they gonna do that? Follow you around? So there’s some really, really bad juju going on up there right now,” DeSantis said, of the bill that would establish the study.
“The idea that billionaires aren’t paying enough taxes so therefore we need to snoop on people that have a bank account of $600 or more. Um, you know, I may have been born on a Tuesday but it wasn’t last Tuesday,” DeSantis contended. “So please, please stop the insanity. And we want to protect people’s financial privacy 100%.”
An image repeatedly shared on Facebook shows a screenshot of a Newsmax report on “Biden tax increases” that refers to a “driving tax.” The screenshot shows bullets saying “per-mile user fee,” “estimated to be 8 cents per mile,” and “amounts vary depending on vehicles.”
But the Biden administration has not proposed such a mileage tax, as the image falsely suggests, according to an AP fact check.
For DeSantis, Friday’s fulmination furthers a trend of complaining about “bad juju” from the Biden administration. He had used the same retro phrasing in March, objecting over that season’s stimulus bill.
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Content from The Associated Press was used in this report.
7 comments
PeterH
October 15, 2021 at 5:25 pm
DeSantis is worse than Trump when it comes to fabricating fake government conspiracies.
Will DeSantis comment on a new Texas school mandate that forces teachers to offer alternative views on the outcome of Hitler’s Holocaust? Don’t hold your breath waiting. You can expect DeSantis to offer a similar narrative to what he has in the past when asked about Texas’s draconian abortion ruling: “we’ll have to wait and see what happens!”
Sound familiar? Let’s remember “wait and see” was Trump’s answer to topics he didn’t want to politically address.
Join fellow conservatives at the Lincoln Project…. help us destroy what remains of the GQP so it can be rebuilt.
zhombre
October 19, 2021 at 8:05 am
Rebuilt as what and by whom? Tell me the politicians the LP supports. All you do is talk about destroying the GOP as it presently exists Describe the alternative in your own simple words. If you can.
Tom
October 20, 2021 at 11:24 pm
Pop goes weasel peter h cannot.
He’s the towel boy for the predator org. Lincoln is a joke. They are obsessed with hate. Period full stop.
WeAsel, supports pathetic Cheney, whose made deal with the devil to try to survive. It won’t work.
Tom Palmer
October 15, 2021 at 6:03 pm
Unless there’s something I’m missing, I don’t get the $600 figure, either. The mileage tracker is supposedly a user fee that’s an alternative to the gas tax, but has a lot of bugs to work out before it sees the light of day. This is more DeSantis political hot air, it seems as he continues to claim he has not national aspirations.
Tom
October 17, 2021 at 10:02 am
This is amazing, AG the local apologist for leftists ideas uses a AP source to question the $600.00 requirement. It’s in the bill AG. The Sec of Treasury has defended it multiple times. Are you serious? My goodness. So the Governor rightly questions it and that somehow it is wrong.
Furthermore they’ve included the mileage tax. Who do you think it affects. The working peeps.
Amazingly, weasel predator org advocate peter h, is defending it cause he hates DeSantis.
My goodness what a smear AG. Just go work for the Dems.
Good for America’s Gov. as he’s right to forewarn. No one is defending this except the weasel and AG.
Charlotte Greenbarg
October 17, 2021 at 11:17 am
The Democrats roll out the usual trolls and verbal tap dancers. I hope to dance on the graves of the Democrat control of Congress and White House.
Tom
October 17, 2021 at 8:58 pm
You will, as will many others.
Alzie Joe is in the never come back lane. His numbers are atrocious.
38% approval on economy awful, Afghan, southern border 25% or so, Covid lie 40’s.
He’s done nothing, more people died of covid in 21, compared to 20.
All vaccines and therapeutics under Trump,
Inflation approaching 30 yr high.
Supply chain broken.
His vaccine mandate puts America at risk.
We are looking at a 40 seat GOP house flip. 6 Senate seats.
DeSantis wins, America’s Gov! Re elected.
Can’t happen soon enough.
Our county is at risk.
Comments are closed.