Morning Wire - Bank Cancels Religious Non-Profit & New Tax Rules | 12.26.22

Episode Date: December 26, 2022

Chase Bank is accused of viewpoint discrimination, the IRS sets its sights on your side hustle, and several European countries warn of blackouts this winter. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.   Use Promo Code 'WIRE' for 10% off your Will: https://www.epicwill.com/   Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit.   Get $25 off your first order as a preferred customer plus a FREE Fiber & Spice. Use promo code WIRE at checkout: https://www.balanceofnature.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A major American bank is being accused of viewpoint discrimination against its own customers. We speak to an insider who details how banks treat customers who they believe pose a reputational risk. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Monday, December 26th, and this is Morning Wire. Has your side hustle collected more than $600 via Venmo or PayPal this year? we speak to a tax expert who explains how the new IRS rules target micro-businesses. And several countries in Europe are warning residents about blackouts as the continent faces an unprecedented energy crisis this winter. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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Here to give us more information about Brownback's claims is Daily Wire Culture Reporter Megan Basham. All right, Megan, so to start, what kind of nonprofit is this? So the National Committee for Religious Freedom is a 501C4 that launched back in January of this year. Its purpose is to support political candidates and legislation that promotes religious liberty. Now, Brownback says it's ecumenical. And what that means is it's open to people of all faiths and its national. advisory board includes Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and members of other religious communities.

Okay, so what happened with Chase Bank? Well, back in May, less than three weeks after the NCRF began banking with Chase, Brownback says the group received notification that their account had been closed. When they tried to get more information, they were told that the decision was made at the corporate level, and they couldn't get any further details. So here's Brownback describing what happened to the Family Research Council. We go to make another deposit in it, and they said your bank accounts been canceled, will be sending you back your funds. That's it.

And we're stunned. We kind of, well, why? What happened? We were told, well, the decision was made at corporate level. It's secret. We're not going to tell you about it, and it's irrevocable. However, after that, Brownback says the group received a call from a staffer in Chase's executive office. And this person said that it might be.

possible to reverse the decision if the NCRF would provide some donor information. Essentially, Chase wanted a list of large donors and information about which candidates the NCRF intends to support. Brownback says he was inspired to go public with the incident after he saw J.P. Morgan Chase's CEO, Jamie Diamond, testifying before Congress recently on the importance of religious freedom. Right. That was a moment that got a lot of national attention. Has Chase offered any explanation for what happened? Well, they've said they can't speak publicly about it because it regards confidential client matters, but they insisted that they wouldn't cancel an account due to a customer's political or religious views. The NCRF says Chase later told them that the account was closed

because the group didn't provide some requested documentation within this 60-day window. But Brownback points out that the account was only open for 20 days before Chase closed it. Yeah. So Brownback publicly invited any other religious group. or nonprofits to reach out to him if they had similar stories. And he says he has heard from several, though so far he hasn't provided details about that. So is there any current policy at Chase that indicates it might choose to end a professional relationship with a client for ideological or political reasons? Well, I spoke with Cleo McDougald, who worked at Chase as an executive director and

vice president for 15 years. And she described an internal process Chase uses called red dotting. Essentially what that means is the flag is placed on internal records that would alert different divisions in the bank not to do any business with that client. And she says there are a number of reasons an account might get a red dot, but one of them is to protect the bank from what McDougal called reputational risk. And that can be generated from concerns over negative media coverage. There's media risk associated with a particular client that, yes, the bank, like I said, can reddoll. dot you or a unit can make the decision that they don't want to pursue the transaction because of what we call repress.

It could just be something like in a newspaper article, which could be completely frivolous, but they make the decision that they don't want to pursue business with you. So if we do business with you, we can kind of be tied to that because of your views. And we do know that in 2021, Chase tried to cancel retired general Mike Flynn's credit cards claiming reputational risk. After public outcry, though, Chase said it was an error. Right, that story generated a lot of buzz at the time.

And if Chase decides to sever a relationship with a client because of this red dotting, what kind of explanation is the client given? Well, McDougald worked on the lending side, but the red dotting applied in retail as well, and she says Chase would keep the explanations pretty vague, and people generally won't know that they've been red-dotted or why they've been red-dotted.

It's going to be more in the internal world. records. They're not going to disclose to the client. Like I said, an example, if I know a client was on the Times and labeled a slumlord and we decided not to move forward, we're not going to say that specifically. There's going to be a vague reason why we denied credit to you. Okay, well, it will be interesting to see if there's more demand for transparency now and how financial institutions make decisions like closing accounts and this red dotting. Thanks, Megan. My pleasure. That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.

Coming up, new IRS rules could mean tax forms for almost everyone who uses Venmo or PayPal. Well, the lack of a red wave during the midterms lead to more reckless spending by a more emboldened administration. Fortunately, Birch Gold can help you convert your IRA or 401k into an IRA in precious metals so you can own gold and silver in a tax shelter to count. Text wire to 9898989.9.98 to claim your free info kit on gold and talk to one of their precious metal specialists. Again, that's wire to 9898989 today. New tax laws implemented earlier this year will target small businesses and individuals who earn more than $600 annually on cash apps like VINMO. Tennessee Senator Bill Haggerty says he will file an amendment raising the limit to $10,000, but for now, the $600 threshold still stands. Here to discuss is Executive Vice President of the National Taxpayer Association Brandon Arnold.

Brandon, thanks so much for coming on. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So as we close out the year, there are a few new tax rules relating to Venmo and those payment processing apps that could sneak up on people this tax season. What are the new rules? So this was Joe Biden's big inflation boosting package, $2 trillion package. One of the things that included was changing the threshold for reporting for 1099K forms, which have been around for a while. but most people have never really encountered. And they reduce the threshold from $20,000 and $200 transactions to $600. And what that means is if you are doing business on third-party platforms, such as using Venmo or the cash app, PayPal to exchange money with people or businesses,

and you hit one of those thresholds, those companies have to provide a form to both the IRS and to you providing information on the amount of those transactions. transactions that may or may not be taxable income, but it will result in a form. So what counts as a business transaction and what counts as a personal transaction? For example, if I have a friend who Venmo's me over $600 over the course of the year, would that then be treated as taxable income? Well, this is intended to capture commercial activity, taxable activity, but it's going to ensnare a lot of personal transactions.

The difficult thing is going to be reconciling those for tax purposes, Because if your friend is sending you $20 on Zeno to pay you back for brunch, that's not a taxable event, even though it may appear on your 1099K form. If you are selling things in a commercial setting, then that probably is a taxable activity. And that needs to be reported on your tax form accordingly. So that's what makes us so complicated is that there's going to have to be this reconciliation process that takes place when you calculate your taxes to assess out what is taxable activity and what is not. headache for small businesses here who are the ones that are going to be most impacted. Now, what about something like receiving a rent payment that's obviously going to hit that threshold very quickly? Is that considered a taxable transaction? No, this modification does not change

what is taxable, what is not taxable. And those payments are not taxable. In a lot of activity that will take place in this 1099 space is not taxable activity. Not everybody's going to know that. That's one of the things that I'm concerned about here is people are going to get this form and they're going to be concerned. They're not going to know exactly what this form is. And they could just assume that all the numbers that appear on the 1099K form need to be reported on the tax form and are taxable income and then go ahead and pay taxes on that amount,

even though much, if not all of that amount, was not taxable. Now, who is this going to affect the most? If you're making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars that people that Biden is purporting to go after, where those are the people that have fancy attorneys that have well-paid accountants that can figure out what this means for them exactly. People on the lower end of the economic ladder, they're the ones that are in trouble here. And as we all know, we're just beefing up the IRS to the tune of $80 billion,

87,000 additional IRS employees, all poised to launch these audits. Of course, when we talk about the $80 billion, one of the things that they are insufficiently addressing, in my opinion, is customer service, answering phones, responding to emails and letters, making sure that people understand their taxes properly. Well, this process is just feeding that confusion. It's making taxes far, far more complicated than they've ever been. All right. Well, Brandon, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much for having me, Jordan. That was Brandon Arnold, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Association. Europe is facing an energy crisis that has the governments of France

and England warning residents about rolling electric outages coming as soon as this month. With the growing crisis, the clash between clean energy and the need for power is coming to a head. Here to give us the details is Daily Wire's Charlotte Pence-Bond. All right, Charlotte, so tell us about the situation developing in Europe. In a nutshell, Europe is cutting down its forests, many of its ancient historic ones, in order to burn the woods to make energy. Europe started subsidizing woodburning more than 10 years ago as a way to move away from oil and gas and jumpstart the green energy transition. But this energy isn't as clean as some had hoped. The way it Works's wood waste is turned into wood pellets that are then burned as clean energy. But a report

by the New York Times found that at least one factory showed that hundreds of the pellet shipments have come from protected forests over the past year. And companies are cutting down forests and cutting up trees that are hundreds of years old in order to promote this method of green energy. The second part of this is that burning wood can actually be worse for the environment than burning coal. All right. So a solution that could actually just make things worse. Right. That appears to the case here. Wood is now Europe's biggest renewable energy source, outpacing wind and solar by a lot. That's

in large part due to subsidies I mentioned. But now this practice is actually backfiring on Europe's clean energy goals. Last year, the EU scientific research agency even said that burning wood released more carbon dioxide than if that power had come from fossil fuels. This woodburning industry is really massive.

EU official data couldn't even figure out where 120 million metric tons of wood had come from that was utilized across Europe last year. Scientists believe the majority of that was likely used for heat and power. And this is all playing into the bigger problem of energy in Europe as Russia puts pressure on Europe by cutting off gas supplies. And now, as the weather is getting worse, we're seeing that the governments of France, England, and Germany are all warning about controlled electrical blackouts, correct?

Yes, that's right. France says a nationwide warning system will alert residents before rolling power cuts. Finland is asking electric vehicle owners to scrape the ice off windshields using elbow Greece, and Germany and Switzerland are warning residents to prepare for energy outages lasting several hours. Europe has been bracing for an energy shortage since Russia invaded Ukraine, topping off natural gas reserves, firing up previously closed coal power plants, and even rethinking its commitment to nuclear power. All of this despite Europe's commitment to ending climate change.

What kinds of policy changes are we seeing so far? German Chancellor Olaf Schultz's government has vowed to restart 27 coal-fired power plants until March 2024. Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and France have all said they are going to prolong or restart power plants that were closed down. On the nuclear side, France will build six new reactors. The UK has committed to building eight,

and even Germany has extended operations of its last three nuclear reactors. Europe is certainly facing some difficult challenges and rethinking some of its energy policies at this point. Charlotte, thanks for reporting. That was DailyWire's Charlotte Pence-Bahn. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow.

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