Today we received a request for account verification on a customer and typed on the bottom of the request form it says:
" The information requested is required under the Federal Housing Program (Section 42 of the Internal Revenue code) to qualify the referenced person for occupancy according to the mandated income guidelines. There should be no fees assessed to verify this information; it is required by law to be verified"
What?! Since when? Our bank, like most, charge a $10 account verification fee. If this practice was illegal then why would we be doing it? We tried to read the referenced code and it appeared to talk about tax issues, not fee waivers. Has anyone dealt with this?!

From whom did you receive the account verification form?

I tried (no wonder our tax system is messed up) to read this section and I came to same conclusion as you. I did not see anything about waiving fees etc. To the best of my knowledge, absent a legal subpoena, a bank is under no obligation (outside of required IRS reporting) to supply information to a 3rd party about one of their account holders. The information may be “required by law” to be verified, but I venture to guess that the “applicant”, not the financial institution, has to verify the information submitted in order to qualify for the low income housing they are seeking.

dpersfull brings up another good point, without a customer signature on the form, you won't be able to release information even if you chose to. And the key point is, you have the option to fulfill the request or not, even if authorized by the customer.

The Chapline House in Price Frederick, MD. You know, I could even understand if it were apparent that it was for low income housing, but I tell you what, our customers average account balance is anything but low income. The request for verification was signed by the customer and I understand that we are under no legal obligation to provide this but if the customer has signed the request form and our disclosure says that we will charge $10 for the service, then I think they should be charged the fee. I am a real stickler for not waiving account fees, I think it happens too often.

I guess I'm just as confused as you. What records from the bank have anything to do with the customer's income. Are they asking for account balances??? Did they give you a specific citation other than Section 42. If this is a high buck customer, you've already wasted more than $10 worrying about it. Is it worth it?

All they wanted was account balance verifications. No there was no other citation quoted. But, you are right that I have spent more than $10 of my time researching this. Anyway, we charged them the $10 and on we go. Just a heads up in case anyone else gets one of these.