WASHINGTON–The head of a bankers’ trade association believes CUNA’s “Open Your Eyes” awareness campaign should also open credit unions to taxation.
Rebeca Romero Rainey, CEO of the Independent Community Bankers Association of America (ICBA), wrote on her blog that “the nation’s tax-exempt credit unions have big plans for their multi-billion-dollar tax subsidy—a nationwide marketing campaign funded by the rest of us.”
Romero Rainey was responding to a plan by CUNA and its CEO, Jim Nussle, to raise $100 million to underwrite the “Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union” campaign, on which CUToday.info reported.
“I guess buying up stadium naming rights isn’t cutting it anymore,” wrote Romero Rainey. “This taxpayer-subsidized investment in the expansion of growth-oriented financial firms certainly is eye-opening. But with the Joint Committee on Taxation calculating the credit union industry’s tax exemption at more than $10 billion through 2021—and with the largest credit unions now nearing $100 billion in assets—they should have little trouble raising the money. After all, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”
Romero Rainey claimed in her blog post that the price of the credit union “subsidy keeps going up,” suggesting it now represents nearly $2 billion in lost revenue to the U.S. Treasury.
‘Beginning to Rethink Exemption’
“And with the National Credit Union Administration working nonstop to drastically increase the powers of the industry it is charged with regulating beyond their statutory limits, credit unions have become virtually indistinguishable from taxpaying banks,” she wrote.
Romero Rainey said the result is that Congress is “beginning to rethink the tax exemption,” and argued the common bond of credit unions is no longer in effect.
“It is time for all of us to open our eyes to the misuse of our tax dollars by a rapidly expanding industry that profits from an unlevel playing field,” said Romero Rainey.