CU mission is ‘just rhetoric,’ state banking groups tell congressional tax-writing panels
They added that credit unions are buying banks, while the NCUA is loosening the regulatory reins on the institutions it regulates.
Every state banker association is asking congressional tax-writing committees to examine whether credit unions still should be exempt from filing federal tax documents detailing their activities.
The 50 state associations and one representing Puerto Rico also asked the committees to investigate whether the NCUA is “promoting policies that make the industry less safe, less sound, more bifurcated, and less directed toward its statutory mission to serve consumers of ‘small means.’”
“Many credit unions know that the equality-essential mission is increasingly just rhetoric, despite it being baked into the law and a primary reason for both advantageous regulation and an income tax exemption,” the banking groups wrote, in asking Congress to decide whether credit unions should be exempt from filing so-called “Form 990.”
And they attached a copy of a controversial study by Federal Financial Analytics that questioned whether credit unions have blurred the lines between banks and credit unions. And the study, which was financed by the American Bankers Association, questioned whether credit unions continue to fulfill their mission.
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