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House Deals Blow to Millions of Small Businesses by Passing Corporate Transparency Act

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 05 2019, @01:35PM   
from the pro-or-con dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

— The United States House of Representatives passed a bill tonight that would put America's small business owners' personally identifiable information at unprecedented risk and cost them billions of dollars and millions of hours in paperwork. The Corporate Transparency Act of 2019 (H.R. 2513), which passed the House 249-173 attempts to shift a responsibility from big banks to America's smallest businesses, saddling them with an additional 131.7 million hours of paperwork at a cost of $5.7 billion over the first 10 years.

"The House today not only shouldered millions of small business owners with a tremendous compliance burden but put their personally identifiable information at serious risk," said NFIB President & CEO Juanita D. Duggan. "The reporting requirements and devastating financial penalties will affect only small businesses, from farmers to franchisees to the mom-and-pop retail shop down the street. It is a big-government solution in search of a small-business problem, and we will not cease our efforts to stand up for small businesses against this serious threat."

The Corporate Transparency Act of 2019 is legislation that would require only those small corporations and limited liability companies with 20 or fewer employees to complete and submit annual paperwork which includes the personally identifiable information of each business owner to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network upon the creation of the business and periodically for the life of the business. Failure to comply is a federal crime with civil penalties up to $10,000 and criminal penalties of up to three years in prison.

https://www.nfib.com/content/press-release/homepage/house-deals-blow-to-millions-of-small-businesses-by-passing-corporate-transparency-act/

While everyone is distracted by "impeachment", this is what the government is doing.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2513
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/proposed-corporate-transparency-act-2019-would-require-corporations-and-limited

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Original Submission

• Re:Put another way... (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @08:14PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @08:14PM (#916489)

  Small businesses already register their owners with the government

  Do they? How and where?

  In fact, this has been an issue for quite some time [acfcs.org]:

  The global AML standards-setting body gave the United States its lowest possible ratings for preventing criminals from laundering money using shell companies, and the oversight of attorneys and real estate agents, black marks tarnishing the country’s overall powerful framework to counter financial crime.

  Those are some of the findings from a mutual evaluation of the U.S. released last week by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets international anti-money laundering (AML) standards. In its latest round of evaluations, the FATF has reviewed more than two dozen countries, this week releasing its evaluation of longtime bank secrecy haven Switzerland.

  As for the United States, FATF evaluators highlighted many of the same deficiencies as a prior review in 2006, chiefly failings tied to requiring that corporate beneficial ownership (BO) details are gathered at company formation and made available to law enforcement.

  The problem of opaque corporate ownership was an issue given top billing on the world’s stage after the Panama Papers scandal revealed how terrorists, criminals and the corrupt can hide illicit assets behind murky ownership structures.
  [...]
  But where the U.S. has its most serious shortcomings, and must make “fundamental improvements,” according to FATF, is tied to capturing beneficial ownership details and making them available to either law enforcement, banks or creating a public register.

  Some U.S. lawmakers, even broad, bipartisan groups, have tried to release bills to address those gaps, but the efforts have never come to fruition.

  Parent

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