surprisingly, rodney alexander and steve scalise voted nay. see house roll call vote 519.
buried inside H.R. 3221 known as the foreclosure prevention act of 2008, sponsored by nancy pelosi is sec. 6050w.
Revenue Provisions
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. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions. Use of an account number or other indicia associated with a payment card will be treated in the same manner as a payment card.
A de minimis exception for transactions of $10,000 or less and 200 transactions or less applies to payments by third party settlement organizations. The proposal applies to returns for calendar years beginning after December 31, 2010. Back-up withholding provisions apply to amounts paid after December 31, 2011. This proposal is estimated to raise $9.802 billion over ten years. ~ source: senate republican policy committee legislative notice no. 62 dated 18 june 2008 page 11 and 12 click here to download .pdf====
* the bill also requires people working in the mortgage industry to be fingerprinted;
* increased the national debt ceiling by $800 billion;
* the treasury can now buy an unlimited amount of fannie / freddie housing securities and stock. while this may help “bolster confidence” in these companies, as the la times mentions, don’t expect it to do much for the dollar! once upon a time, our national currency was backed by gold. more recently, it has been backed by us treasury securities. now it will be backed - at least in part - by fannie mae / freddie mac housing securities - securities that are collapsing on the open market because no one else wants them. ~
source
GovTrack.us. H.R. 3221--110th Congress (2007): Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, GovTrack.us (database of federal legislation) (accessed Jul 25, 2008)
Because the government takes a day or two to post legislative information online, GovTrack is usually one legislative day behind.
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