— 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: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 06 2019, @01:13AM (2 children)
The difficulty of filling out the form is not an issue, IMO. It's the fact you have to fill out one more form. A small business owner works his arse off already, often times putting in double the hours of any employee. Most small business owners start on less than a shoestring, and work their way up from nowhere. There's no time to research all the required forms, where to get them, and how to fill them out.
It's just one more headache, stacked on top of a small mountain of headaches. Businesses with the resources to deal with these headaches are probably not "small businesses" at all.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday November 06 2019, @10:33PM (1 child)
This should be a simple addition to any tax software, if the information is not included already. I think the issue lies with the fact this isn't already included, so a great deal gets left hidden. They could just abolish the ability to create shell companies, then I suspect the issue would go away.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:26AM
This reporting is not tax related.