On Aug. 12, ABC joined a coalition of business organizations in a letter to the conferees of the National Defense Authorization Act opposing a House-passed provision that would overhaul anti-money laundering regulations, including a requirement that corporations report ownership information to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The provision was not included in the Senate version of the NDAA. Now House and Senate NDAA conferees must decide if this small business mandate will remain in the final version of the bill.

Under the current Customer Due Diligence Rule, financial institutions are required to collect and verify the identities of the beneficial owners of companies that have accounts with their banks. The so-called Corporate Transparency Act would shift this responsibility away from these large banks, which are best equipped to handle the reporting requirements, and instead burden millions of small businesses, which often have limited capacity to file unfamiliar government paperwork. This proposal would also expose small businesses to serious criminal penalties for paperwork violations and raises privacy concerns as it provides law enforcement officials broad access to personal information without a subpoena or warrant. This would set a dangerous precedent that could be detrimental to our member employers.

ABC’s government affairs team will continue to work with Congress and the coalition to ensure this harmful provision is not included in the final NDAA.