[TLI]

Payment Card and Third Party Network Information Reporting. The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions.

Well, pretty much anything can be bought on an electronic card sooo, Let's just go ahead and buy everything that way, one stick of gum, one can of beans, one burrito, one soda, one ink cartridge, one light bulb, one tire at a time. Just drown the bazdards in trillions of transactions. The store owners are going to go berserk on this as the fee per transaction is going to eat them up. They will hammer congress to get this dropped.

In the meantime, one beer, one quarter tank of gas, one comic book, one DVD, one ink pen, one backpack, one loaf of bread, one..., one..., one..., one..., one..., one..., one..., one..., one..., one..., one...

[Maceman]

Just drown the bazdards in trillions of transactions. The store owners are going to go berserk on this as the fee per transaction is going to eat them up.

They won't drown. The stores don't have to track it. The card processing networks are already tracking this information (down to the line item detail for corporate purchases).

Undoubtedly, it will increase card processor and issuer business costs, which may or may not be passed on to the merchants in fees. But the feds don't care about that.

I have recently been involved in a project looking at how the 403(b) retirement plan industry is scrambling to meet the new IRS regs that take effect on 1/1/09. It requires the plan providers and sponsors to track all kinds of new data on participant fund withdrawals (loans and hardship withdrawals) just to make sure the feds can grab their pound of flesh. The industry is scrambling to be able to handle the data requirements -- with some vendors leaving the space, and plan providers (primarily educational institutions and non-profits) having to completely change the way they do business. The technology systems are still being designed at great cost and effort.

The amount of money being spent on the new compliance issues is immense -- all without adding a single penny of actual value to the process (it actually is reducing value). You think the IRS cares about that? (Obviously not.)

So as far as the new reporting requirements in Dodd's housing plan goes, I don't think the idea of drowning the merchants and the feds in this data will have any impact at all on the implementation of this new rule.