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— 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.
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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:10PM (8 children)
Averaging is deceptive. The vast majority of Americans fall into a category of employee/minor/retired/unemployed. A much much smaller number are self-employed. This is going to hit those people and nobody else. And no it won't be worked into the price because there are a lot external reasons that limit the price a person can charge. So this isn't going to cost every American 0.5c. It will cost the vast majority nothing, and a small minority a lot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:25PM (7 children)
30 million businesses, with 20 or fewer employees - total US population is 325 million, so, sure, they clearly don't average > 12 employees each, but they do comprise at least 10% of the total population, and a much higher percentage of the working population.
I agree with the bitch and moan about yet another redundant reporting of repeated information to yet another branch of the government that can't communicate with itself. Still, the price (less than 30 minutes per business per year) seems small enough to pay for the result of getting that information "above board" and clearly visible to the agencies that have a reason to know it.
Personally, I believe that if you're doing business in the U.S., you should be transparent about who you are (not just a DBA ad in a newspaper classified that nobody reads - that may have worked in the early 1800s, not so much anymore), and even, gasp, what kind of profit/loss you are making. As stated elsewhere: my home and land ownership is all public record, as is everyone elses, and that doesn't seem to have imploded anybody's privacy into oblivion - sure, I get the occasional junk mail offering to buy my real-estate, I wish a pox on all junk mail, but hiding property ownership isn't the answer.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:36PM (4 children)
I've been in business for 15 years and even so, just this year some obscure state agency I'd never heard about wants some data that has taken over a week's worth of hours to complete. So much of this stuff is completely outside the realm of what you would think about -- about three or four years into my business, the city made me aware I wasn't paying property tax. I lease office space, have no company cars, nothing of any great value (desks, servers, chairs, paperclips, etc.). I literally have to pay property tax on my office supplies, though I don't actually have to count the paperclips and can estimate their value thankfully. Who would think that after paying sales tax on consumer goods, there would be some government entity out there looking to get a property tax on the value of those already taxed goods. Fine, whatever, I pay the city's stupid property tax on paperclips. Where this law differs from the normal level of oppressive bullshit, is the PRISON time. They won't go after banksters crashing the entire economy, but forget or not know about some form and you could go to prison. Nice.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:48PM (3 children)
Thank your city politicians for that one...
Thank your national level politicians for that one.
There are so many laws that so many people break every minute of every day - it's one of the things that I, as all powerful Emperor of the Matrix, consciousness transferred into the machine and re-living 1940 through 2140 over and over in simulation, would attempt to change and see what happens:
What if "THE LAW" actually said what it meant, and was enforced 100%? Laws could be so much more lax than they are, the freedom, and leveling of the playing field would be quite interesting.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @08:33PM (2 children)
You already admitted to being a lifelong corporate drone upthread, no surprise you do not understand the plight of people who want to live normal lives without feeding the beast.
Blame the politicians for that? No, blame you who keeps voting for and justifying this oligarchical crap just to get a few more coins in your pocket.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @12:50AM (1 child)
This is not oligarchic crap, quite the opposite actually by making it harder for people to run fraudulent businesses to launder their ill gotten monies and evade taxes. I don't think any honest business has any problem mailing a piece of paper outlining who has a stake in their business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @01:44AM
Oh? Have you run a business and dealt with all the regulatory crap? What do you think happens when one of the dozens of documents like this turns out to have an error or gets forgotten?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday November 05 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)
Except this information is *not* redundant. The Federal government does not currently require this information, and most states don't either.
As for the "costs," we have a single piece of paper, an inconsequential amount of ink, an envelope and a stamp. That, plus the 3-5 minutes (max) it may take to list the information required is negligible (all amounts are in USD):
Piece of paper: $0.02
Ink used (I'll fatten this up so no one can say I'm skimping on the costs): $.05
Envelope: $0.10
First Class Postage stamp: $0.55
Labor required (at $150/hour): $12.50 (again, fattened way up, this is a ridiculously high number)
Total: $13.22/year
Using the 30,000,000 businesses you mention, at the *inflated* rates I have above, that's ~$400,000,000 per year, about 20% less than the "estimate" in TFS.
The whining sounds like a lot of bullshit to me.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05 2019, @08:44PM
Well, the real bitching and moaning is coming from the shell factories who now have to reveal how bogus they really are. If you recall the Panama papers, shell owners include some of the most rich and powerful- and some of them are smart enough to launch promotional whitewashing campaigns to protect their continued privacy / secrecy.
If you haven't seen it, The Laundromat is a pretty entertaining take on the situation.
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