The millions of businesses that rode out the recent roller-coaster of court rulings and chose not to file their CTA reports to date should be feeling pretty good right now. Fresh on the heels of FinCEN’s announcement that it was pausing enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act pending the enactment of new regulations, the Treasury Department yesterday shed some additional light on what the new reporting regime will look like. Here’s the press release:
The Treasury Department is announcing today that, with respect to the Corporate Transparency Act, 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. The Treasury Department will further be issuing a proposed rulemaking that will narrow the scope of the rule to foreign reporting companies only. Treasury takes this step in the interest of supporting hard-working American taxpayers and small businesses and ensuring that the rule is appropriately tailored to advance the public interest.
So anyone concerned about the Trump administration’s position on the CTA – particularly after FinCEN appealed a ruling that had prevented the reporting requirements from taking effect – can breathe a sigh of relief. Here’s how President Trump reacted to the announcement yesterday:
And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:
This is good news all around. Not only is Treasury taking aggressive action to limit the damage the CTA poses to the small business community, but it’s evident our concerns about the law are shared by some pretty important people.
There are, however, some open questions as to how things play out from here. The Administration clearly has the ability to amend regulations issued by their predecessor, but what about the underlying statute? And what about the many court cases pending that challenge the CTA based on fundamental constitutional issues?
Our plan is to press forward in supporting the court challenges while working with Congress on repeal language. Yesterday’s announcement provides the business community with immediate relief from this onerous and unconstitutional data grab. Now it’s our job to make that relief permanent.
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The Lander Chamber of Commerce subscribes to S-Corp’s “Washington Wire” and occasionally shares news items with Lander Chamber members.
