America’s Credit Unions, along with 10 other financial trade groups, wrote to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee to urge the passage of legislation “to ensure the IRS follows the original intent of Congress and prevents disruptions to the consumer and commercial lending industries.”
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) eIncome Verification Express Service (IVES) Modernization and Anti-Fraud Act of 2023 (H.R. 3335) looks to address a pair of recent policy changes from the IRS. The agency said that it will not send “IVES transcripts to mortgage lending firms for the sole purpose of obtaining a mortgage on residential or commercial real property (land and buildings)” or provide IVES to government agencies.
The groups highlighted that important government agencies use IVES, including the Small Business Administration, “to confirm the income of a borrower during the processing of a loan application, an important tool to combat fraud and for decreasing the costs and increasing the speed of underwriting a loan.” Additionally, they called attention to other actions taken by the IRS, often without notice, that have rendered IVES unusable, “wasting more than $72 million dollars in the process.”
