How will the "rich people" maintain privacy/secrecy after the Corporate Transparency Act?
[1] https://www.uschamber.com/co/start/strategy/small-business-c...
There's a lot of talk about the increase in KYC for individuals setting up accounts with banks and other financial institutions for reasons of anti money laundering. And yet anonymity is still allowed (and effectively encouraged) in business ownership which could facilitate far greater amounts of money laundering more easily.
Ever since reading about Mossack Fonseca it has bothered me (not confused me though, since the rules are made by the people who most benefit from it).
Which is why homeless people and ne'er-do-wells get paid $10 to sign a piece of paper (which remains unread) but states this responsibility for shell companies X, Y, and Z.
Also, by design, shell companies don't tend to have assets worth seizing.
I know I'm mixing up limited understandings of Australian and US legislation, and sprinkling on top of that my frustrations with those two fairly strict legislative countries allowing business to be conducted with organisations that have opaque, international ownership structures. It's a glaring hypocrisy (that I'm likely missing a fair bit of nuance due to only a surface understanding) given the ratcheting up of the surveillance state on individuals.
The whole area is something that I would like to gonzo-research as a retirement project.
The BOI requirements of the CTA were recently ruled unconstitutional (as exceeding federal commerce-clause power and encroaching on powers reserved to states) in the first major test case before a federal court. [1]
Since it was ruled unconstitutional on reserved powers grounds, they didn't even reach the 4th amendment implications, but there may be further consideration as these cases make their way up the court heirarchy.
It's definitely not certain that this database is going anywhere.
> How will the "rich people" maintain privacy/secrecy after the Corporate Transparency Act?
The same way they do now. The CTA as formulated was only binding on non-publicly-traded companies with 20 or fewer employees. It also explicitly exempted companies whose primary business activity is financial services or asset holdings. This is why many regard it as an attack on small business disguised as an accountability measure for big business.
[1] https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/corporates/cta-un...
Only those that dwell in darkness fear the light. Exposing who own these LLC's seems like a solid 'pro-truth' move for America.
Because if you insist on privacy for the “helping people escape rulers” business the money laundering and criminals will suddenly be in that building!
Happy to be proven wrong though, and to hear counter-anecdotes (I find it incredibly interesting). Systems and loopholes and patches and 'bugs'.
3D printers only just barely became viable as prototyping tools for molds in the last few years. Specifically the Form 3.
You don't fight discrimination by making yourself anonymous.
I agree that is a sensitive issue - but only in so far as 'gotta cover their ass' from a conservative job... which is... a weird place for a sex-toy designer to be... (which raises far more questions about the quality of toy-design if it isn't supporting a livelihood). Appeasement to conservatives is rarely a good strategy... appeasement through omission of data about who they are hiring seems like your family member put themselves in this precarious situation on their own volition. Everyone's got to eat, though, so can't be too bothered :)
But hiding who you are: feels morally dubious and self serving in that case you present.
I wonder: do you hold the same views when it comes to regular people's online privacy?
But a business's ownership is about the privacy of its owners/stock holders - which are regular people. Saying their privacy is "morally dubious and self serving" is akin to saying regular people's need for privacy is morally dubious and self serving. Is the old anti-anonymity argument of "if you're all legit, what do you have to hide?!"
There is an argument to be made here though when said owner is another corporate entity - that is not a person so maybe it doesn't deserve any privacy.
Agree on that point.
One argument I muster for the general case: say you disagree politically with a billionaire and don't wish to give them any money, if you don't know what companies they own: how can you act effectively in market actions with limited information? such an arrangement systemically gives power to the owner class compared to the consumer class on every exchange made between the two. We should strive for something fairer, something more open. And we should not be terrorized by the limited few deranged bad faith/violent actors.
As an individual you are entitled to hate whomever you want. After all, we all have the racist uncle or the commie nephew. But the law should shield the public from people like you, not help you hunt your victims. Anti-segregation, anti-discrimination and privacy laws are good for that.
I don't want to give my money to a billionaire fascist, or capitalist, evangelical, or -ism (What I want is proper market information to act rationally as a market actor). I don't want to hunt anyone. I worry about what internet content you consume to make you think that's what I think. I would examine that.
You are about ready to fight a battle with a scarecrow you constructed yourself.
Maybe escrow services that did not hide their identity would solve the problem (for a price)?
"Vote with your dollar" is for morons. I don't reconcile it because it is irrelevant.
That's all I care about or want: To know 'who', not where 'who' is.
Seems good to me.
One of her friends registered an llc with herself as the owner, and one of her followers looked her llc up and found her real name and address via the state llc registration web site. He then hid in the bushes outside her house and "surprised" her. Leading her to close the llc and move.
That's got nothing to do with attempts to force business owners to submit sensitive personal information into a central database, which you wouldn't even have access to unless you had corrupt influence over the organization maintaining it.
Yeah this has worked out so well historically.
The whole point of privacy laws is to allow for the idea of bad actors on the other side of the equation. I'm all for tightening up loopholes but off hand sayings like this are thrown around all the time and they're terrible logic that isn't at all backed up by evidence.
The unscrupulous aspect might not be the company, but the audience. It shouldn't be that hard to imagine that owners of companies might be targeted for harassment, violence, etc., and might even be reluctant to invest in a company at all because of the problems that would come from being publicly listed in association with that company. One might argue that ownership comes with these consequences, but of course the impact might be broader, extending to friends and family members, who wouldn't necessarily have any ownership stake in the business. The Internet being the Internet, this tends to be a particular problem for women and minorities.
Then there's cases where the information could be harmful to the company, not the owner.
There's cases where they're just trying to avoid PR/political problems that can be perfectly defensible, but if you're having to defend them, you've already lost the PR/political battle. The Internet being the Internet, even if they purge all public political positions from their personal discourse, even historical political activity going back well before they ever founded a business could be a problem. I know business owners who make sure their business avoids engaging in anything that would put them on any side of a political or hot button issue, and they extend that to themselves because their name is attached to the business.
Simple example: I know one person who is involved with shelters for battered women. They're fine that everyone knows they're involved in it, but there are some businesses they've invested in where they're a silent partner specifically because their partners don't want the harassment/violence/ill will that can come with that.
Every single one of them. If you don't want to do business with a firm that's evasive about its ownership, that's your prerogative, but forcing anyone engaged in business to have sensitive personal information about them recorded in a centralized database that will be a beacon for corruption and abuse is invasive, anti-social, and dangerous.
> Only those that dwell in darkness fear the light.
You are of course welcome to post your full name, home address, phone number, social security number, annual income itemized by source, credit score, and any other personal information you feel should be exposed to "light" right here in this thread.
It's funny that every bit of that information is demanded by employers, and they usually don't reciprocate. It's only considered "sensitive" information because our society is incompetent and corrupt. The secrecy that protects the rich and powerful is an artifact of that corruption. In a just and competent society, none of that information could be used against us, because we wouldn't be using identifiers as secret keys, and harassers could be identified and punished.
If you have to hide to feel free, you're not actually free.
Name, address, phone, SSN, credit card numbers, tax returns, itemized income statement, health records, SMS logs, phone logs, email account exports, relationship history.
> It's only considered "sensitive" information because our society is incompetent and corrupt.
"Society" is an abstract concept, and the concrete reality that it represents is a large collection of people who are mostly strangers to you, and whose interests and values are by no means guaranteed to align with yours even when they are totally honest.
> The secrecy that protects the rich and powerful is an artifact of that corruption.
The same secrecy protects you and me. And at the end of the day, I don't care one bit about "the rich", and "the powerful" are exactly who I want safeguards against.
> In a just and competent society
...the streets would be paved with gold, champagne would flow from the taps, we'd all live to be a thousand, and our pets would speak to us in perfect English.
> none of that information could be used against us
You are of course free to use HTTP instead of HTTPS for all of your web-based data transmission.
> If you have to hide to feel free, you're not actually free.
I think I'll stick with imperfect freedom in this reality over perfect freedom in a nonexistent one.
We could extend this argument to individual taxpayer info too. Have these things happened with taxpayer info, and does that mean the IRS shouldn’t get to know where you live?
Actually, yes. Same with voter registration. Hell in WA state voter registration is public knowledge, along with whether you voted in any given election.
Try it if you want it, but read the terms of service. Lots of "if you use this for advertising it's a felony" for anyone looking to grift
https://www.sos.wa.gov/washington-voter-registration-databas...
A judge ruled it unconstitutional - narrowly only for the organizations and their members that filed the case - and its currently being appealed by the US gov
its going to the 5th circuit though so rich people don't have to do anything, this regulation is DOA
its interesting what cases make headline news and whats relegated to law journals
It certainly made headlines to people its impacts. 2 of my law firms sent out alerts. (They send out alerts maybe 1-2 per year whenever a significant legal change is happening - I think the last alert was the Wayfair sales tax Supreme Court decision)
I took one look at the law and figured that I won’t have to do it by 2025 because it’ll get declared unconstitutional
so far my bingo board is working out
When it comes to actual personal wealth management (not corporate tax optimization) there is also Austria, Lichtenstein, Geneve, Monaco, etc which are all very livable for HNWI and their families.
Geneva and Monaco sure but one thing you have to realize about Geneva/Monaco is that for simply HNWI(UHNWI is 25 mil and up) Monaco is too expensive and Geneva has a horrible ratio of living costs to living quality(the expensive hotel quarter is right next to the "open drug/prostitution market at midnight on a Saturday" quarter). Geneva basically lost its lustre for 10-20 million networth foreigners after Cologny became saturated and overpriced over the last 10-15 years.
By hiring ex-CIA Agents having experience with setting up shell corporations after said act.
In the UK, all of that information is freely available to anyone via Companies House.
The basic operation of markets depends on having as little information asymmetry as possible between opposite sides of a transaction, and part of that means knowing who you're doing business with to make informed decisions about the reputation of your counterparty.
I'm not sure why ownership needs to be openly published in advance -- you can always query them confidentially through private correspondence -- or how having ownership compiled into a federal database that you don't have access to (unless you have corrupt influence over the relevant agency) will help you.
I mean, I think the whole point of the act is to stop "rich people" from maintaining privacy/secrecy in regards to the businesses they own. And that's a good thing.
No, the act has little effect on "rich people". It applies only to non-public firms with 20 or fewer employees, and exempts most firms in the banking and finance industries.
It encumbers your local barbershop and the mom-and-pop restaurant on the corner, but the "rich people" get a pass.
> And that's a good thing.
It turns out that "rich people" have as much right to maintain the privacy of sensitive personal information as anyone else.