Earlier this week we covered the latest effort in Congress to make things right when it comes to the Corporate Transparency Act. That starts with deleting the beneficial owner database that’s not just unnecessary but actively puts millions of Americans’ sensitive information at risk.

Thanks in large part to Congressman Warren Davidson, who chairs the Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions, we now have a bit more clarity on where things stand. At a hearing convened Tuesday, FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki offered the following response to a question from the panel:

Along with …

(Read More)

Couple important developments to report on the Corporate Transparency Act front.

First, around 90 members of Congress yesterday sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging that the CTA database be purged entirely. It makes clear:

As Congress works to provide long-term relief from the CTA, we urge the Department of Treasury and FinCEN to promulgate a final rule that exempts U.S. businesses from the CTA. We also acknowledge that millions of U.S. small businesses have already registered with FinCEN. This data must be immediately destroyed to protect the privacy of small business owners.

The letter underscores the reality that …

(Read More)

Treasury’s rollback of the wildly overbroad Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) reporting requirements was a major step in protecting the privacy of Main Street business owners, but it’s not the only threat out there.

New mandatory country-by-country (CBC) reporting for multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in Australia marks a radical departure from established practices by forcing private enterprises to expose commercially sensitive and personally linked information to the public domain. The regime is disproportionate, intrusive, and constitutes a violation of the privacy of the businesses and the individuals who own them. As PWC notes:

The Australian Parliament has passed legislation that …

(Read More)

Earlier today a House Financial Services subcommittee held a hearing entitled, “Following the Money: Tools and Techniques to Combat Fraud.” The hearing covered many topics, but the conversation returned time and again to the awful Corporate Transparency Act.

The hearing kicked off with Congressman Warren Davidson (R-OH) – who leads the charge to repeal the statute – making the case for the Treasury Department’s recent overhaul of the CTA rules:

Presumably, operating a business or even a homeowners association, means you are engaged in illicit finance. Meanwhile, our Constitution says that …

(Read More)