As a followup to yesterday’s CTA Watch newsletter we wanted to highlight two notable items, starting with a great thread by our friend Liam Donovan from the Associated Builders and Contractors. Liam breaks down the history of the CTA, the statute’s underlying flaws, and where things currently stand:
Among his other points, Liam does an excellent job of explaining just how confounding the Senate’s failure to act is here:
So if the dysfunctional, do-nothing House passed a CTA relief bill with the support of 99.8% of the chamber almost a year ago, the Senate passed it by acclamation, right? Wrong. Referred to Senate Banking 12/13/23. Maybe they moved the bill introduced by the ranking member? Nope.
Which goes back to OH. From his perch as Banking chair, Sherrod Brown could green light this bill today–the same power he flexed to enact CTA. Hopefully he does the right thing when they come back for the lame duck. Either way, millions are closer to criminality than they know.
Next we have an op-ed penned by S-Corp president Brian Reardon that ran in the Washington Examiner, which points to recent compliance data from FinCEN as yet another reason to pause the CTA:
Meanwhile, most of those law-abiding business owners are wholly unaware of the CTA, and even fewer have filed the necessary reports. Less than 1 of 8 covered entities has filed to date, according to new data from FinCEN.
Some states are in worse shape than others. Only 5% of covered businesses in Ohio have filed, for example. That is less than half the 13% of California businesses that are complying but more than the paltry 4% in Pennsylvania. FinCEN predicts that 32 million existing businesses and 5 million new ones will have to file nationally this year, so we are in danger of having tens of millions of noncompliant business owners by the new year.
That’s a big problem since the failure to file is a felony. You read that right. Under the passionate leadership of Harris, the federal government is moving forward on a policy that will turn millions of small business owners into felons by the end of the year.
There are less than three months to go before the CTA’s year-end filing deadline, after which millions of small business owners will become de facto felons. The good news is this issue is getting some serious traction in the press and Congress. We plan to keep up the pressure to ensure a favorable outcome for the Main Street business community.