Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.A California law firm has filed a class-action lawsuit against First National Bank of Omaha, saying the bank charges merchants an illegal fee.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Douglas County District Court, says the fee is not allowed under the law firm's contract with the bank.
A spokesman for First National said that the company hadn't received the lawsuit and that it doesn't comment on pending litigation.
The federal Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 requires companies that process credit and debit card payments to tell the federal government how much money merchants received from credit card transactions. Last year was the first time those companies had to track that income.
The law's goal is to catch businesses that avoid taxes by inaccurately reporting their income to the Internal Revenue Service.
The IRS has said card processors cannot charge a fee to the businesses but rather must absorb the cost.
But that's what Amador L. Corona's law firm says happened — that First National Bank and its card processor, Transcendent One, charged the firm fees to submit the report to the IRS.
The lawsuit says the bank informed Corona's law firm that the $27.95 fee — which would be collected three times annually — is being charged "in order to implement and manage the processes and systems required to comply with these new reporting requirements."
"This is just another example of big companies taking advantage of the little guy: the small-business owners of our country who take credit cards as a form of payment," Corona's Florida-based attorney, Joel Ewusiak, said.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1084, roseann.moring@owh.com
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