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

— 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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  • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:05PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @02:05PM (#916238)

    Are you the crook or the lawyer Mr Buzzard :P

    Not looked into the PI amendment but for foreigners, income sourced in the US is taxable unless exempted by treaty. Even then, the forms [irs.gov] have to be completed and the intent is solely prevent tax-evasion and crime. You guys could work through this on IRC in an evening while browsing the interwebs and deleting Aristarchus submissions.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:34PM (9 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:34PM (#916331) Homepage Journal

    Missing the point. It would cause unnecessary work, unnecessary risk, and privacy invasion for NCommander and matt_. All for the crime of paying out of their own pockets to get this place up and running. Or if we didn't pay attention and missed it one time later down the road, they'd get fined around twice what they put into the site and have to sit in prison for a few years.

    The field where grow my fucks about what applies to foreign corporations doth lie barren during this conversation.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:25PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:25PM (#916382)

      Good thing charities and non-profits are exempt. Look at this twat [companieshouse.gov.uk] - do you seriously think a name and correspondence address is a privacy invasion? Oh and you can see the other directors and financial statements by clicking on the company name. Amazingly useful information for vetting customers and chasing bad debts.

      The US company registration system is by state and usually there's only the name of a registered agent available on the certificate. How about the treasury make the info public and other agencies get it from there? Would that be "unnecessary work, unnecessary risk"?

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:32PM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:32PM (#916427)

      Curious: what hassle would be required to declare and operate SN as a non-profit / charity?

      Vaguely related: if you do so, my company offers donation matching to any non-profit of my choosing, and I suspect many other large corps do the same.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @02:11AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @02:11AM (#916657)

        It looks like they are a Public Benefit Corporation registered in Delaware. Now, I'm not licensed in Delaware, but I usually tell my clients here that they are better off forming a new non-profit and then transferring the property over. It isn't too difficult but would probably cost $1000 or less to transfer stuff over. The real problem is how much time it takes. Thanks to the IRS getting its funding slashed, they grind to a halt every 3 months to do audits and enforcement.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:10PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:10PM (#917554) Homepage Journal

        Non-profits take a whole lot more up-front cash and paperwork to set up than a PBC, which is why we went that way. One of these days if we find we just have way too much money, we can still set up a non-profit. Personally, I think we can almost always find a better way to spend time and money than on bureaucracy.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @08:30PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @08:30PM (#916501)

      Aww yer just upset we'll find out SN is another commie created destabilization campaign!

      If you got nothing to hide amirite???? You've campaigned pretty hard on morals and ethics meaning nothing anymore, so what's the deal big fella?

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:30PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:30PM (#916548)

      It would cause unnecessary work, unnecessary risk,

      I'll agree that it will cause "more" work and risk, and maybe you could convince me it causes "excessive" work and risk. However, it is far from unnecessary.

      Currently people can create shell companies, who own shell companies, who own shell companies. They shuffle money around them like so many poker chips, resulting in multi-millionaires (let alone billionaires) who are effectively immune to all public scrutiny and accountability. It's literally the same issue as hidden offshore bank accounts.

      There are also issues of creating shell companies to hide actions, such as trying to do a hostile takeover of a company and hiding their buying of stock, or a a religion trying to literally buy a city piece by piece [insider.com] (or an oil company doing the same, etc).

      If the claim is that sunlight cleanses corruption, I'd think that should apply to business just as much as it does to politicians.

      If you want to argue that it's not worth it or the detriment is more than the benefit, then sure, let's have that discussion. However, don't pretend that this is just pointless bureaucracy, because it isn't.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:14PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:14PM (#917558) Homepage Journal

        Volunteer and do it then. I'm certainly not going to. I'll wrangle ancient and occasionally insane perl, I'll admin servers with multiple different distros, I'll even admin the site itself, but I will not do paperwork.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.