By Rose Oswald Poels
The House-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (H.R. 1) included a few key wins for the banking industry — importantly, a modified version of the ACRE Act that would help to enhance competition with government-backed farm lenders and tax relief for Subchapter S banks.
Now that the bill is in the hands of the Senate, WBA has been advocating publicly and behind the scenes with our U.S. Senators to underscore how vital it is that the Senate version of the bill include at least the same modified version of ACRE as in the House bill. In coalition letters to Senate leadership, we have also requested increases to the tax exemption percentage from that contained in the House version. Finally, we continue to support the inclusion of tax relief for Subchapter S banks.
Additionally, WBA recently learned of a different provision in the House version of the bill that could become burdensome for financial institutions. A provision in the legislation would impose a 3.5% tax on all cross-border remittance transfers made by any non-U.S. citizen — applying not only to individuals remitting money, but also to all bank-to-bank cross border transfers. The language in the House version does not distinguish between remittances sent by non-citizens who are in the U.S. legally or illegally, which means the scope reaches to non-citizen business owners who are in the U.S. legally conducting their business will be subject to the 3.5% excise tax every time they transfer money out of the U.S. Banks will have to verify the citizenship status of the remittance requestor and, if that requestor is not a U.S. citizen, banks will have to collect and remit the tax to the U.S. Treasury.
Finally, the House version creates a new account called the “Trump Account” which would place $1,000 into an investment account for every newborn in the U.S. As written, the funds are placed into stock market index funds, managed by the child’s legal guardians, with the goal of building long-term financial security.
WBA will keep members apprised of these and other relevant developments as the language continues to evolve.