I can understand trying to cut red tape, but this law was intended to fight the money laundering schemes the cartels used to fund their operations. The administration is threatening war with other countries under the guise of illegal drugs, but will roll over if it means they can't cheat on taxes anymore.
It's not like they are rolling back the incredibly expensive and privacy invading "Know-Your-Customer" rules across banking as a whole.
> not like they are rolling back the incredibly expensive and privacy invading "Know-Your-Customer" rules across banking as a whole
That might be the end goal. And if it is, I narrowly support it. (Yes, KYC makes cartels’ business more complicated. But it’s also a privately-administered tax on commerce and an uncloaking of NGOs and media organisations, the latter being my areas of concern with this administration.)
But it’s incoherent with launching an origin-based tariff war, or purporting to be fighting e.g. cartel finances (or even illegal immigration). If a Chinese entity can sock themselves inside two Nevada corporations and purport to be American, you’re not going to collect your tariffs or enforce purchase restrictions, e.g. on chips. (Particularly for digital goods.)
If a cartel is alone in the forest carrying out no kidnappings, assignations, drug sales, or other physical effects that can be policed by conventional means... does it matter?
The beneficial ownership registration was a massive privacy invasion with little hope of providing more than an incidental benefit to the claimed applications. Those cartels would just fail to register ownership or stick patsy proxies in place.
> It's not like they are rolling back the incredibly expensive and privacy invading "Know-Your-Customer" rules across banking as a whole.
> beneficial ownership registration was a massive privacy invasion
A corporation is a legal entity granted by a state for the express purpose of generating commerce and benefiting society. The idea that you have a right a corporation and responsibilities for its fiduciary government but not have to report its controlling interests is silly.
And yes, it probably matters. Cartels are buying guns and cars and paying thugs in US dollars that they get out of the US. Even if you force them to use exclusively cash, it becomes a lot harder to move that much cash across the border without detection.
> If a cartel is alone in the forest carrying out no kidnappings, assignations, drug sales, or other physical effects that can be policed by conventional means... does it matter?
Yes, because that's a made up scenario. What are they doing in the forest if they're not doing something to make money? If they aren't doing anything illegal, they're a business, not a cartel.
Ultimately they want money in the same system as everyone else. If you let people set up companies where the owner can't be discovered in some way, businesses set up for laundering money become an expected cost. Shut one down, another pops up. The only way you stop that is to find the people facilitating it.
Having billionaires is bad enough. Anonymous billionaires is a nightmare.
Our entire AML regime has scant evidence of efficacy [1].
Scrapping KYC and AML and creating a public beneficial-owner database (like the SEC’s EDGAR) for entities doing business in America would frankly be more effective.
It isn't about whether a regulation works or not or is burdensome or not. It's about whether it benefits the folks making the decisions. Or the folks that are paying them.
Combine this with Trump announcing that the US is gonna buy cryptocurrency as part of the US Sovereign Wealth fund and you've got a stew going.
I don't quite get it. It seems that what this does is put the burden on reporting of this information back onto banks, not that this information will not be collected. Further it is my understanding that the reporting was to identify the up to four people who had controlling interests in companies with more than 20 employees and 5 million in sales. the intention being to reduce money laundering and terrorism.
Name the four largest shareholders? This honestly does not seem like any kind of burden to me. If it is, I have way more burden reporting short vs long term capital gains or hell even renewing my passport.
> seems that what this does is put the burden on reporting of this information back onto banks
Currently, yes. The modus operandi seems to be the President does X and then the Congress legalises it. (See: USAID.)
Not how it’s supposed to work! But precedented in e.g. the late Roman Republic. (Why, I believe, the British implemented a vote of no confidence for replacing the executive, versus our system’s much-more extreme system of impeachment.)
Perhaps you should consider that humans have been putting monumental amounts of effort to hide who owns these businesses? Its reasonable to me to assume that those who wish to conduct their business in the shadows have something to hide. Removing the light and returning to shadows? Does that seem like a good idea to you?
With all these regulations being removed, I see no reason not to just start doing white collar crime. We’re being given permission. Who wants to launder some money?
So your morals are merely the product of what seems to be legal at the moment? And because one paperwork requirement got removed you now feel license to, by your own admission, commit crime?
This is meant to be a cynical comment on the state of the world? I think your cynicism has eaten a part of you.
> morals are merely the product of what seems to be legal at the moment?
I’d personally say it depends on the crime. If you’re laundering money to support a worthy cause, I’m not okay with it legally though I might be morally sympathetic. If the guys at the top aren’t following the law, the weight I put on the former is lessened and my sympathies in the latter may win out.
Well it matches how corporations already operate, they brag about being in compliance with regulations, fda or any other, as if it’s something to be proud of. No, just barely satisfying the minimum quality standards is not something to aspire to.
How does a regulation that creates an invasive federal ownership registry with no meaningful legislative controls on the confidentiality of that information help to protect the public?
None of that information has any right to confidentiality. It's in the public's interest to know who owns all the fraudlent accounting trick shell companies that exist solely to steal money from "hardworking taxpayers"
Why shouldn't it be public? We should be allowed to know who owns a company, especially when it's trivial for anyone with a bit of money to set up and tear down a company. If you let that be anonymous, how do you ever hold anyone liable for anything? The customer relationship will be owned by a throw away company and you end up with a buyer beware system where bad actors spin things up and down so quickly that no one can keep track of anything or hold anyone accountable.
Think of selling lead paint. If I sell using a company with beneficial ownership known, you can eventually ban me from getting a business registration in that category. If I don't have to disclose that info, I could start a new company every month using different branding and I'd have a dozen "different" products on the market before regulators would be able to unwind the first company.
We even have a small preview of that system. Look at the quality, or lack of quality rather, of products bought off of Amazon. It's all the same garbage sold through dozens of different brands. Once it delves into the realm of being illegal, you need to be able to cut it off at the source, aka beneficial owners that are being enriched.
Would you argue against knowing the owner for personal bank accounts? I can't walk into a bank and open an account without them knowing exactly who I am and every bank account I have is tied by to the same, real world identity - me. Why should I participate in that invasive system if rich people with shell companies don't have to?
Why should any of it be confidential? When you ask our government to grant you special privileges, seems like we should know who's benefiting. Don't like it, don't incorporate and don't enjoy the benefits.
The last time I read the Federal Register and SORN documents for the BOI Registry, they were _explicitly_ confidential, limited to government access based on need. There are already legislative oversight controls in place.
the trick is to spend 30 years stacking the courts with charlatans who value the political project above all else, and to have a congress full of complete losers with no self respect or desire for public service
I don't understand the deep details of this, although I have submitted the forms for the three companies I own already but perhaps it arises from the weird nature of the US. It's a country, but not really. Specifically when you form a company it is registered with a state, not the country. The state knows (or could know) who you are. But, at least without looking in NSA databases, the federal government has no idea. Unless the state tells them. Which you might expect they would, but perhaps not? So this requirement is really there so the federal government gets a synced copy of the database each state already has, but done in the most inefficient way possible.
The same weirdness shows up with identity documents (drivers' license) which again is issued by the state, but federal authorities want to get the data. Ending with the very odd situation that you can choose from two kinds of license in the state I live in: one works to get on a plane (federal administration) the other does not.
> one works to get on a plane (federal administration) the other does not.
You can always just use a passport if you have the "federally limited" license. If you already have a passport there is almost no reason to get the federally linked license.
The President has been accused of money laundering and now unilaterally decides the Treasury will no longer enforce a law aimed at reducing money laundering. It’s entirely self serving and obvious.
"not only will it not enforce any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines, but it will further not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after the forthcoming rule changes take effect either"
So now you can hide money offshore easier? Soo cool.
Readit News
It's not like they are rolling back the incredibly expensive and privacy invading "Know-Your-Customer" rules across banking as a whole.
That might be the end goal. And if it is, I narrowly support it. (Yes, KYC makes cartels’ business more complicated. But it’s also a privately-administered tax on commerce and an uncloaking of NGOs and media organisations, the latter being my areas of concern with this administration.)
But it’s incoherent with launching an origin-based tariff war, or purporting to be fighting e.g. cartel finances (or even illegal immigration). If a Chinese entity can sock themselves inside two Nevada corporations and purport to be American, you’re not going to collect your tariffs or enforce purchase restrictions, e.g. on chips. (Particularly for digital goods.)
The beneficial ownership registration was a massive privacy invasion with little hope of providing more than an incidental benefit to the claimed applications. Those cartels would just fail to register ownership or stick patsy proxies in place.
> It's not like they are rolling back the incredibly expensive and privacy invading "Know-Your-Customer" rules across banking as a whole.
One step at a time.
A corporation is a legal entity granted by a state for the express purpose of generating commerce and benefiting society. The idea that you have a right a corporation and responsibilities for its fiduciary government but not have to report its controlling interests is silly.
And yes, it probably matters. Cartels are buying guns and cars and paying thugs in US dollars that they get out of the US. Even if you force them to use exclusively cash, it becomes a lot harder to move that much cash across the border without detection.
I don’t think I understand your comment.
Yes, because that's a made up scenario. What are they doing in the forest if they're not doing something to make money? If they aren't doing anything illegal, they're a business, not a cartel.
Ultimately they want money in the same system as everyone else. If you let people set up companies where the owner can't be discovered in some way, businesses set up for laundering money become an expected cost. Shut one down, another pops up. The only way you stop that is to find the people facilitating it.
Having billionaires is bad enough. Anonymous billionaires is a nightmare.
Did that work?
Our entire AML regime has scant evidence of efficacy [1].
Scrapping KYC and AML and creating a public beneficial-owner database (like the SEC’s EDGAR) for entities doing business in America would frankly be more effective.
[1] https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...
Combine this with Trump announcing that the US is gonna buy cryptocurrency as part of the US Sovereign Wealth fund and you've got a stew going.
Name the four largest shareholders? This honestly does not seem like any kind of burden to me. If it is, I have way more burden reporting short vs long term capital gains or hell even renewing my passport.
Currently, yes. The modus operandi seems to be the President does X and then the Congress legalises it. (See: USAID.)
Not how it’s supposed to work! But precedented in e.g. the late Roman Republic. (Why, I believe, the British implemented a vote of no confidence for replacing the executive, versus our system’s much-more extreme system of impeachment.)
Remarkably close to the pitch against any privacy protection.
This is meant to be a cynical comment on the state of the world? I think your cynicism has eaten a part of you.
I’d personally say it depends on the crime. If you’re laundering money to support a worthy cause, I’m not okay with it legally though I might be morally sympathetic. If the guys at the top aren’t following the law, the weight I put on the former is lessened and my sympathies in the latter may win out.
Think of selling lead paint. If I sell using a company with beneficial ownership known, you can eventually ban me from getting a business registration in that category. If I don't have to disclose that info, I could start a new company every month using different branding and I'd have a dozen "different" products on the market before regulators would be able to unwind the first company.
We even have a small preview of that system. Look at the quality, or lack of quality rather, of products bought off of Amazon. It's all the same garbage sold through dozens of different brands. Once it delves into the realm of being illegal, you need to be able to cut it off at the source, aka beneficial owners that are being enriched.
Would you argue against knowing the owner for personal bank accounts? I can't walk into a bank and open an account without them knowing exactly who I am and every bank account I have is tied by to the same, real world identity - me. Why should I participate in that invasive system if rich people with shell companies don't have to?
There are strong confidentiality protections around FinCEN’s BOI [1]. (Lol.)
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-X/p...
Deleted Comment
The rule of law. (And Presidents have done this before.)
Law and order refers to crime and punishment [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_order_(politics)
The same weirdness shows up with identity documents (drivers' license) which again is issued by the state, but federal authorities want to get the data. Ending with the very odd situation that you can choose from two kinds of license in the state I live in: one works to get on a plane (federal administration) the other does not.
You can always just use a passport if you have the "federally limited" license. If you already have a passport there is almost no reason to get the federally linked license.
So now you can hide money offshore easier? Soo cool.