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Comment by ejstronge | Hacker News Reader

This $600 threshold corresponds to the point where a business would have to issue a 1099 to a contractor. It makes sense to have this sort of symmetry - is there a reason you think paying using an app should have different reporting thresholds than using other payment options?

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Well you can wire up to 10K without an SAR being sent to the government, so perhaps that should be the number instead?

Don't worry, the SAR limit will be lowered to $600 to correspond with everything else.

Hi, I'm from Merriam-Webster. We need to add "Overton Window" to the 2023 edition. OK if we cite your post, not just as an example, but as the literal definition?

I’m not sure why you cite an Overton Window - this literally only relates to business payments, just like the 1099 threshold.

When the $600 limit was introduced, some of us objected. We were told it was "just for businesses and contractors," and furthermore that "The slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy."

So, yeah. This only seems normal because we accepted the last overly-intrusive measure.

The way I think is that more surveillance should be removed rather than added. The burden of them tracking your money should be on the IRS not assuming every American who conducts a money transaction on PayPal and Venmo is criminal until proven innocent. Look at how much authoritarian and authoritarian leaning governments love digital transactions and decide if that's the direction we should be headed.

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