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.)
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.
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.
Sure it's a bit philosophical, but so is the idea of an owner's right to privacy.
I don't deny a corporation's fiduciary duty to its owners. But the state issuing the corporation isn't bound to the same duty when establishing the legal terms of corporations.
Sorry, by "state" here I mean the federal government. The definition and tax status of corporations, LLCs, etc already lie with the Treasury department.
My point is that these definitions and requirements do not come from some sort of divine law. A government can always amend the terms of incorporating and it would still be completely within the function of modern capitalism, just as different governments around the world offer different terms when incorporating.
> 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.
I find that scenario even funnier because there's literally an alternate version which no one in the US will even consider but would be much more effective: legalise the drugs. Let people sell them in stores. Earn taxes on the sales!
The only reason drug cartels exist is because of the insatiable US demand for drugs.
> The only reason drug cartels exist is because of the insatiable US demand for drugs.
Yes and no.
Drugs are the market that cartels currently serve, but they also thrive because of weak local governments. Keep in mind the mafia has existed for literally centuries in some places before drugs and alcohol - on nothing more than violence and protection rackets.
We've seen the newer cartels willing to diversify into other criminal activities like taking hostages or even avocado rackets. Legalization may shrink the resources of the cartels, but you would probably see an increase in other unsavory activities that would still create refugees and trade problems for us.
On the surface, yeah. I didn't explain very well, but what I meant is that you end up with drug addicts either way and you'd want to figure out which solution costs the least overall.
If it were possible to calculate, it would be easy to decide which solution is best. My opinion is that things feel like they've gotten worse in Canada as we've softened drug enforcement. It's a feeling, not a fact because I can't factor out all things that cause an increase in drug use, so it's hard to say if we've seen things get worse because of softer policing or in spite of it.
Every single person I know that works in a related field tells me that stuff like safe injection sites and soft on drugs policies have had a negative collateral effect on homelessness, the need for medical services, the need for police, etc.. That makes me hesitant to buy into the idea that making access to drugs easier will improve things.
My point is that invading people's privacy on ownership is not a requirement for effective law enforcement against cartels. Cartels may well commit secondary crimes related to money laundering, but the things cartels do that we actually care about are not that and don't require extensive privacy invasion to police.
To use a silly example, we could also cut down on cartel activity (and many other serious crimes) if every internet connected device were required to stream room audio back to the government for keyword matching and surveillance. We don't do this because of principles, because of the risk of enabling other crimes, and because it would be a bad tradeoff-- a lot of invasion when we have less invasive tools available.
Financial enforcement is empirically one of our most effective tools to combat organized crime.
> We don't do this because of principles, because of the risk of enabling other crimes, and because it would be a bad tradeoff
Really the only reason we don't do this is because of the Constitution. The Constitution could prevent us from capturing beneficial ownership data from corporations, but indeed it does not. Of course one can make this argument in front of SCOTUS (and perhaps will some day) but there's a reason you're not making that argument now, which is that it's a bit silly on its face.
Corporations are fundamentally legal objects of the state, which is why they're registered at all. You can operate whatever business you want without incorporating (and without the legal affordances thereof) and then you don't need to disclose any information to anyone.
> The Constitution could prevent us from capturing beneficial ownership data from corporations, but indeed it does not
It actually does, in numerous parts of it (the 9th Amendment comes to mind pretty easily).
This is a bad law, with the usual bad excuse to harm innocent Americans. Point me to all the situations where this would have helped, and now compare that to the amount of time and money spent complying. Then we can have a fair debate.
> Financial enforcement is empirically one of our most effective tools to combat organized crime.
I'd love to read more on this position.
> Really the only reason we don't do this is because of the Constitution.
While the US is better about privacy than many other places, most of the developed world still manages to not be a surveillance hellscape without strong constitutional protections. Besides, the constitution does very little directly to protect privacy because the framers failed to anticipate technological advancement and the size of the future bureaucratic state... we have what we have largely because of jurisprudence that has read the constitution rather expansively-- which it's done so for the same reason that nations without constitutional civil liberties still largely respect individual privacy: it's a human right which we implicitly recognize.
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.
> your comment about it not having evidence is right next to the comments about the evidence is yet-to-be-published
Beneficial ownership information is/was a new component of anti-money laundering. The previous AML had scant evidence of working. BOI was never mandated, so of course we have no evidence either way. But my priors are grim given the framework it emerges from, AML, hasn’t been particularly successful.
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?
No you seem as baffled as I am. But when people try to hide information, revealing the truth often takes a MONUMENTAL effort. Genuinely, I’m not sure why you think this wouldn’t be a burden or why you’d be so dismissive?
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"
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.
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.
> When you ask our government to grant you special privileges
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.)
I think the ability to steer a potentially-immortal "legal entity" with capabilities that an individual citizen doesn't have, and that has zero existence outside what what we collectively will into existence via the government, is definitely a privilege.
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 is significantly less protection than there is even for tax returns, which themselves clearly receive inadequate protection.
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.
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
Working to dramatically alter the courts and protect criminal presidents from consequences since 1973. Notice what very-recent document they're behind, having "2025" in the title. Take a look over the "positions" section, too.
I don't want to overstate the situation, but this organization is pretty close to being the most-apt answer to "why can't we have nice things?"
The rot started with the Business Plot, it's just that WW2 beat fascism back for a generation and they couldn't functionally regroup until Nixon's time.
I mean, yeah, they are saying that you can commit a crime and they won't punish you. That's what "suspending enforcement" means. I think what you mean is that "law and order" is usually applied to poor criminals, where as what is happening here is refusing to enforce laws on the rich criminals.
> think what you mean is that "law and order" is usually applied to poor criminals
No, I mean the “order” bit of law and order pertains to the criminal effects. The Wikipedia article has a good reference to examples of order without law.
The law has been suspended. But we have no evidence of resulting criminality. If and when that criminality occurs, that is the breakdown of order.
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.
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.
It is the sense of Congress that—
(1) more than 2,000,000 corporations and limited liability
companies are being formed under the laws of the States each
year;
(2) most or all States do not require information about
the beneficial owners of the corporations, limited liability
companies, or other similar entities formed under the laws
of the State;
(3) malign actors seek to conceal their ownership of corporations, limited liability companies, or other similar entities in
the United States to facilitate illicit activity, including money
laundering, the financing of terrorism, proliferation financing,
serious tax fraud, human and drug trafficking, counterfeiting,
piracy, securities fraud, financial fraud, and acts of foreign
corruption, harming the national security interests of the
United States and allies of the United States;
(4) money launderers and others involved in commercial
activity intentionally conduct transactions through corporate
structures in order to evade detection, and may layer such
structures, much like Russian nesting ‘‘Matryoshka’’ dolls,
across various secretive jurisdictions such that each time an
investigator obtains ownership records for a domestic or foreign
entity, the newly identified entity is yet another corporate
entity, necessitating a repeat of the same process;
(5) Federal legislation providing for the collection of beneficial ownership information for corporations, limited liability
companies, or other similar entities formed under the laws
of the States is needed to—
(A) set a clear, Federal standard for incorporation practices;
(B) protect vital Unites States national security
interests;
(C) protect interstate and foreign commerce;
(D) better enable critical national security, intelligence,
and law enforcement efforts to counter money laundering,
the financing of terrorism, and other illicit activity; and
(E) bring the United States into compliance with international anti-money laundering and countering the
financing of terrorism standards;
(6) beneficial ownership information collected under the
amendments made by this title is sensitive information and
will be directly available only to authorized government authorities, subject to effective safeguards and controls, to
(A) facilitate important national security, intelligence,
and law enforcement activities; and
(B) confirm beneficial ownership information provided
to financial institutions to facilitate the compliance of the
financial institutions with anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism, and customer due diligence requirements under applicable law;
(7) consistent with applicable law, the Secretary of the
Treasury shall—
(A) maintain the information described in paragraph
(1) in a secure, nonpublic database, using information security methods and techniques that are appropriate to protect
nonclassified information systems at the highest security
level; and
(B) take all steps, including regular auditing, to ensure
that government authorities accessing beneficial ownership
information do so only for authorized purposes consistent
with this title; and
(8) in prescribing regulations to provide for the reporting
of beneficial ownership information, the Secretary shall, to
the greatest extent practicable consistent with the purposes
of this title—
(A) seek to minimize burdens on reporting companies
associated with the collection of beneficial ownership
information;
(B) provide clarity to reporting companies concerning
the identification of their beneficial owners; and
(C) collect information in a form and manner that
is reasonably designed to generate a database that is highly
useful to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies and Federal functional regulators.
FYI I was informed combing through peoples posting history is a big rule violation here. Your response should speak to the current comments/position not attack posters.
> I was informed combing through peoples posting history is a big rule violation here
Not OP, but I don’t know if that’s universally true. It’s available, after all. It seems to be fair to identify trolls. (I’ve personally been thankful for people pointing out my personal hypocrisy blind spots)
I think the harm from doing that, however, is you can make a mistaken conclusion on limited information and personalize something. Doing so can make you run afoul of Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. or Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
So in good faith reply, nullc, I think I am reacting appropriately to the situation and even though you could describe these in ways that seem similar in common language, they scenarios are very different.
I agree they're different but I think you have the sense reversed: In the case you complained about the private information is still just being shared within government agencies and is still protected by felony penalties for further wrongful disclosure. So for example, if a DOGE employee gives you that tax info they're committing a felony and if you further publish it you're also committing a felony (though perhaps if you're using it to advance the administration's agenda you won't be prosecuted-- but at least you could be).
Obviously any expansion of access is a risk. But the risk of creating a database in the first place is I think qualitatively different and worse.
In the case of the beneficial ownership data, it's a new massive collection of information which right out the gate is permitted to be shared outside of the federal government-- both with state entities and businesses. And wrongful use is not a felony, further redistribution is not a felony-- so I think we should be pretty dubious about what limitations exist when they don't have teeth.
I hope that explains my perspective better and why I thought the contrast was relevant.
(As far as the history check-- I think I only bothered looking because your account name was 'throwaway', and I think it's useful to know if I'm responding to an earnest participant vs a troll. My apologies for the dismissive presentation of my position: I do think it's useful to contrast the policies on these two issues).
Incredible move for entrepreneurship in the USA. This created just another stupid piece of paper to file that we no longer have to - which was requested on shaky legal grounds and punished by $5000/day fines.
This is information is already on file in tons of places, so the requirement is asinine - I personally never filed mine since it was caught up in the court but I'll gladly take this win.
> This is information is already on file in tons of places, so the requirement is asinine
er, no it isn't, at least some states let you create fairly anonymous companies where the state has no idea of the actual owner of the company, and the lawyers who created it might not either.
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.)
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.
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.
One step at a time.
> 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.
> corporation is a legal entity granted by a state for the express purpose of generating commerce and benefiting society
This is an off-piste philosophical take. It overwrites a corporation’s management’s fiduciary duty to its owners with one closer to a charity’s.
Sure it's a bit philosophical, but so is the idea of an owner's right to privacy.
I don't deny a corporation's fiduciary duty to its owners. But the state issuing the corporation isn't bound to the same duty when establishing the legal terms of corporations.
> the state issuing the corporation isn't bound to the same duty when establishing the legal terms of corporations
The states forming corporations aren’t the ones requiring BOI.
Sorry, by "state" here I mean the federal government. The definition and tax status of corporations, LLCs, etc already lie with the Treasury department.
My point is that these definitions and requirements do not come from some sort of divine law. A government can always amend the terms of incorporating and it would still be completely within the function of modern capitalism, just as different governments around the world offer different terms when incorporating.
> definition and tax status of corporations, LLCs, etc already lie with the Treasury department
For tax purposes, yes. For almost everything else, no. State law controls.
> 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.
I find that scenario even funnier because there's literally an alternate version which no one in the US will even consider but would be much more effective: legalise the drugs. Let people sell them in stores. Earn taxes on the sales!
The only reason drug cartels exist is because of the insatiable US demand for drugs.
> The only reason drug cartels exist is because of the insatiable US demand for drugs.
Yes and no.
Drugs are the market that cartels currently serve, but they also thrive because of weak local governments. Keep in mind the mafia has existed for literally centuries in some places before drugs and alcohol - on nothing more than violence and protection rackets.
We've seen the newer cartels willing to diversify into other criminal activities like taking hostages or even avocado rackets. Legalization may shrink the resources of the cartels, but you would probably see an increase in other unsavory activities that would still create refugees and trade problems for us.
It's an extremely difficult problem because you end up with drug addicts either way and those people aren't productive.
I would consider myself a proponent of legalized marijuana, but hard drugs are a completely different scenario.
> you end up with drug addicts either way
If you end up with addicts either way and taxes only one, that seems to imply an obvious better choice?
On the surface, yeah. I didn't explain very well, but what I meant is that you end up with drug addicts either way and you'd want to figure out which solution costs the least overall.
If it were possible to calculate, it would be easy to decide which solution is best. My opinion is that things feel like they've gotten worse in Canada as we've softened drug enforcement. It's a feeling, not a fact because I can't factor out all things that cause an increase in drug use, so it's hard to say if we've seen things get worse because of softer policing or in spite of it.
Every single person I know that works in a related field tells me that stuff like safe injection sites and soft on drugs policies have had a negative collateral effect on homelessness, the need for medical services, the need for police, etc.. That makes me hesitant to buy into the idea that making access to drugs easier will improve things.
Your argument is “if cartels are magically not a problem, then they’re not a problem and then this is useless?”
I don’t think I understand your comment.
My point is that invading people's privacy on ownership is not a requirement for effective law enforcement against cartels. Cartels may well commit secondary crimes related to money laundering, but the things cartels do that we actually care about are not that and don't require extensive privacy invasion to police.
To use a silly example, we could also cut down on cartel activity (and many other serious crimes) if every internet connected device were required to stream room audio back to the government for keyword matching and surveillance. We don't do this because of principles, because of the risk of enabling other crimes, and because it would be a bad tradeoff-- a lot of invasion when we have less invasive tools available.
I'm arguing the same applies here.
Financial enforcement is empirically one of our most effective tools to combat organized crime.
> We don't do this because of principles, because of the risk of enabling other crimes, and because it would be a bad tradeoff
Really the only reason we don't do this is because of the Constitution. The Constitution could prevent us from capturing beneficial ownership data from corporations, but indeed it does not. Of course one can make this argument in front of SCOTUS (and perhaps will some day) but there's a reason you're not making that argument now, which is that it's a bit silly on its face.
Corporations are fundamentally legal objects of the state, which is why they're registered at all. You can operate whatever business you want without incorporating (and without the legal affordances thereof) and then you don't need to disclose any information to anyone.
> The Constitution could prevent us from capturing beneficial ownership data from corporations, but indeed it does not
It actually does, in numerous parts of it (the 9th Amendment comes to mind pretty easily).
This is a bad law, with the usual bad excuse to harm innocent Americans. Point me to all the situations where this would have helped, and now compare that to the amount of time and money spent complying. Then we can have a fair debate.
> Financial enforcement is empirically one of our most effective tools to combat organized crime.
I'd love to read more on this position.
> Really the only reason we don't do this is because of the Constitution.
While the US is better about privacy than many other places, most of the developed world still manages to not be a surveillance hellscape without strong constitutional protections. Besides, the constitution does very little directly to protect privacy because the framers failed to anticipate technological advancement and the size of the future bureaucratic state... we have what we have largely because of jurisprudence that has read the constitution rather expansively-- which it's done so for the same reason that nations without constitutional civil liberties still largely respect individual privacy: it's a human right which we implicitly recognize.
> but this law was intended to fight the money laundering schemes the cartels used to fund their operations
Did that work?
The reporting deadline was going to be March 21, 2025.
It did not work because they did not try it. They suspended enforcement before the thing was going to take effect.
User "timewizard" should note that the date of reporting for this law was still in the future when the law was effectively killed.
> 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...
I like the part where your comment about it not having evidence is right next to the comments about the evidence is yet-to-be-published.
> your comment about it not having evidence is right next to the comments about the evidence is yet-to-be-published
Beneficial ownership information is/was a new component of anti-money laundering. The previous AML had scant evidence of working. BOI was never mandated, so of course we have no evidence either way. But my priors are grim given the framework it emerges from, AML, hasn’t been particularly successful.
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?
> reasonable to me to assume that those who wish to conduct their business in the shadows have something to hide
Remarkably close to the pitch against any privacy protection.
Yes yes, let’s take a law meant to shine a light on corruption and rebrand that law as the corruption itself.
What something is “meant” to do and what it actually “does” can be two wildly different things.
We’ll never know in this case
> let’s take a law meant to shine a light on corruption and rebrand that law as the corruption itself
Who said the CTA is corrupt?
Are you implying that I am supportive of this announcement?
No you seem as baffled as I am. But when people try to hide information, revealing the truth often takes a MONUMENTAL effort. Genuinely, I’m not sure why you think this wouldn’t be a burden or why you’d be so dismissive?
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.
Make big news about Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine but quietly shoot down the regulations that help to protect the people of USA.
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"
Nice presumption of guilt!
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.
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.
> When you ask our government to grant you special privileges
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.)
I think the ability to steer a potentially-immortal "legal entity" with capabilities that an individual citizen doesn't have, and that has zero existence outside what what we collectively will into existence via the government, is definitely a privilege.
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.
> is definitely a privilege
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.
> with no meaningful legislative controls on the confidentiality of that information
There are strong confidentiality protections around FinCEN’s BOI [1]. (Lol.)
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-X/p...
There is significantly less protection than there is even for tax returns, which themselves clearly receive inadequate protection.
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.
What makes it invasive?
How do they just decide to stop enforcing a law passed by congress?
Because no one will stop them.
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
Dang. I didn’t know MAGA existed 30 years ago. Hell they didn’t even exist 20 years ago. Quite powerful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation
Working to dramatically alter the courts and protect criminal presidents from consequences since 1973. Notice what very-recent document they're behind, having "2025" in the title. Take a look over the "positions" section, too.
I don't want to overstate the situation, but this organization is pretty close to being the most-apt answer to "why can't we have nice things?"
This isn't a MAGA thing. This rot started with Nixon
The rot started with the Business Plot, it's just that WW2 beat fascism back for a generation and they couldn't functionally regroup until Nixon's time.
You are witnessing the break down of law and order.
> You are witnessing the break down of law and order
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)
I mean, yeah, they are saying that you can commit a crime and they won't punish you. That's what "suspending enforcement" means. I think what you mean is that "law and order" is usually applied to poor criminals, where as what is happening here is refusing to enforce laws on the rich criminals.
> think what you mean is that "law and order" is usually applied to poor criminals
No, I mean the “order” bit of law and order pertains to the criminal effects. The Wikipedia article has a good reference to examples of order without law.
The law has been suspended. But we have no evidence of resulting criminality. If and when that criminality occurs, that is the breakdown of order.
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.
Are laws meaningless if they can arbitrarily suspend enforcement?
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.
Besides not having to use a passport when you fly domestically come May (unless it changes _yet again_).
For the record https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/Corporate_...
It is the sense of Congress that— (1) more than 2,000,000 corporations and limited liability companies are being formed under the laws of the States each year; (2) most or all States do not require information about the beneficial owners of the corporations, limited liability companies, or other similar entities formed under the laws of the State; (3) malign actors seek to conceal their ownership of corporations, limited liability companies, or other similar entities in the United States to facilitate illicit activity, including money laundering, the financing of terrorism, proliferation financing, serious tax fraud, human and drug trafficking, counterfeiting, piracy, securities fraud, financial fraud, and acts of foreign corruption, harming the national security interests of the United States and allies of the United States; (4) money launderers and others involved in commercial activity intentionally conduct transactions through corporate structures in order to evade detection, and may layer such structures, much like Russian nesting ‘‘Matryoshka’’ dolls, across various secretive jurisdictions such that each time an investigator obtains ownership records for a domestic or foreign entity, the newly identified entity is yet another corporate entity, necessitating a repeat of the same process; (5) Federal legislation providing for the collection of beneficial ownership information for corporations, limited liability companies, or other similar entities formed under the laws of the States is needed to— (A) set a clear, Federal standard for incorporation practices; (B) protect vital Unites States national security interests; (C) protect interstate and foreign commerce; (D) better enable critical national security, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other illicit activity; and (E) bring the United States into compliance with international anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism standards; (6) beneficial ownership information collected under the amendments made by this title is sensitive information and will be directly available only to authorized government authorities, subject to effective safeguards and controls, to (A) facilitate important national security, intelligence, and law enforcement activities; and (B) confirm beneficial ownership information provided to financial institutions to facilitate the compliance of the financial institutions with anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism, and customer due diligence requirements under applicable law; (7) consistent with applicable law, the Secretary of the Treasury shall— (A) maintain the information described in paragraph (1) in a secure, nonpublic database, using information security methods and techniques that are appropriate to protect nonclassified information systems at the highest security level; and (B) take all steps, including regular auditing, to ensure that government authorities accessing beneficial ownership information do so only for authorized purposes consistent with this title; and (8) in prescribing regulations to provide for the reporting of beneficial ownership information, the Secretary shall, to the greatest extent practicable consistent with the purposes of this title— (A) seek to minimize burdens on reporting companies associated with the collection of beneficial ownership information; (B) provide clarity to reporting companies concerning the identification of their beneficial owners; and (C) collect information in a form and manner that is reasonably designed to generate a database that is highly useful to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies and Federal functional regulators.
Today is a massive victory for criminals.
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FYI I was informed combing through peoples posting history is a big rule violation here. Your response should speak to the current comments/position not attack posters.
> I was informed combing through peoples posting history is a big rule violation here
Not OP, but I don’t know if that’s universally true. It’s available, after all. It seems to be fair to identify trolls. (I’ve personally been thankful for people pointing out my personal hypocrisy blind spots)
Doesn't say that in the guidelines. Also why is there a /threads page then if one isn't supposed to use it to look at someone's comments?
I don't think that is the case, and I didn't care that the parent poster did so. The guidelines are succinct, you can confirm this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think the harm from doing that, however, is you can make a mistaken conclusion on limited information and personalize something. Doing so can make you run afoul of Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. or Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
So in good faith reply, nullc, I think I am reacting appropriately to the situation and even though you could describe these in ways that seem similar in common language, they scenarios are very different.
I agree they're different but I think you have the sense reversed: In the case you complained about the private information is still just being shared within government agencies and is still protected by felony penalties for further wrongful disclosure. So for example, if a DOGE employee gives you that tax info they're committing a felony and if you further publish it you're also committing a felony (though perhaps if you're using it to advance the administration's agenda you won't be prosecuted-- but at least you could be).
Obviously any expansion of access is a risk. But the risk of creating a database in the first place is I think qualitatively different and worse.
In the case of the beneficial ownership data, it's a new massive collection of information which right out the gate is permitted to be shared outside of the federal government-- both with state entities and businesses. And wrongful use is not a felony, further redistribution is not a felony-- so I think we should be pretty dubious about what limitations exist when they don't have teeth.
I hope that explains my perspective better and why I thought the contrast was relevant.
(As far as the history check-- I think I only bothered looking because your account name was 'throwaway', and I think it's useful to know if I'm responding to an earnest participant vs a troll. My apologies for the dismissive presentation of my position: I do think it's useful to contrast the policies on these two issues).
Incredible move for entrepreneurship in the USA. This created just another stupid piece of paper to file that we no longer have to - which was requested on shaky legal grounds and punished by $5000/day fines.
This is information is already on file in tons of places, so the requirement is asinine - I personally never filed mine since it was caught up in the court but I'll gladly take this win.
If it's just a piece of paper, what are you bitching about? Pull up your bootstraps and fill it out and quit your whining.
> This is information is already on file in tons of places, so the requirement is asinine
er, no it isn't, at least some states let you create fairly anonymous companies where the state has no idea of the actual owner of the company, and the lawyers who created it might not either.
Maybe we can get him to get rid of FATCA reporting too? lmao