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?
Do you also think it's the public's right to have a camera in your bathroom because you might be snorting lines of coke in there? :)
The beneficial ownership information goes well beyond shell companies doing weird accounting tricks. In particular, it makes it so that it's impossible to own a home without having your name connected to it in a vulnerable databases which criminals will almost certainly be able to access.
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?
You ask your state to create a corporation. You ask your bank to give it a bank account. The U.S. requires the bank to make you told the U.S. who your beneficial owners are. This isn’t a story about a party granting privileges asking for something in return.
And the parties granting those privileges, states and banks, don’t treat them as privileges. Being denied an LLC is extraordinary in every U.S. jurisdiction I know. Being denied a bank account is more common, but still often requires some reason. (Even if it isn’t communicated to the customer.)
Note that my argument is narrow: your argument doesn’t hold. I agree with you in these data not deserving confidentiality. But not because incorporation is a privilege, but because there is a social good to making it public and social cost to letting people hide behind fictitious persons. (Where I disagree with the CTA is in making these data only available to law enforcement and the like. FinCEN’s BOI should be public.)
But yes, there's also a strong argument in favor of transparency here because it's a good, pro-social idea. My argument is more a counter to folks crying that their liberty's being stepped on or whatever. Government creates corporations, we can have it do what we want with/to them, some moral argument against our at least being able to know who the hell's benefiting from these creations of our government is somewhere in "not even wrong" territory.
Voting is both a privilege and a right. Incorporating is not a privilege inasmuch as the government isn’t typically afforded discretion in granting it.
There are strong confidentiality protections around FinCEN’s BOI [1]. (Lol.)
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-X/p...
In particular, blanket permission is given for warrentless access for "law enforcement activity" and undisclosed, target unauthorized access for "compliance with customer due diligence". And overall the restrictions are no stronger than "shall not"-- it's not a felony to violate the rules.
In practice it's likely to end up like many states license plate databases where it's easy for sleazy PIs to just bribe access through corrupt LEO or agency desk staff.