I had never heard of the Beneficial Ownership Report until a friend told me about it.

Several links to more information, including how to report, if you are a business, even a tiny one like the Beat, and are required to fill out the form before the end of December 2024.

If you don't, you face a $500-a-day fine. Yes, you read that right.

Such a fine would clean the Beat out in a few days, and most small businesses cannot stand that hit!

I'm a business, according to the convoluted instructions on https://www.fincen.gov/boi-faqs#C_2 . It seems that many financial entities are exempt? One hopes that they are otherwise scrutinized.

What is the history of this new (at least to most of us!) 2024 mandate to fill out the Beneficial Ownership Report ?

Back in 2020, Congress somehow decided that it needed to pass "The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020." Wasn't that already illegal?

According to this website, https://www.fincen.gov/anti-money-laundering-act-2020 , the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) made changes in 2021. And then on, June 28, 2024, the "enlightened" members of the agency decided to issue a "news release," https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-issues-proposed-rule-strengthen-and-modernize-financial-institutions 

Did you as a small business, receive this? No? Neither did I.

To me, this is nothing but another attempt to "control" us and every tidbit of our businesses must be held in a "confidential" file. Yeah, right, a confidential file accessible to how many hundreds of people in this network?

I dug some more, and yes, the U.S. Senate passed  this Anti-Money Laundering Act on Jan. 1, 2021, overriding then-president "Trump's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, passing into law legislation that includes – as Division F – the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (AML Act)." This is found at https://natlawreview.com/article/anti-money-laundering-act-2020-congress-enacts-most-sweeping-aml-legislation-passage .

My question is why are we just now finding out about this after all those years? The link just above explains that we probably should have been filling out this form since 2023.

Then, in 2023, another news release came out (but evidently not to you or me) https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-issues-proposed-rule-strengthen-and-modernize-financial-institutions 

How is filling out a form saying that you didn't launder money going to work? It will put every small business that reports under the scrutiny of FINCEN. But the crooks that do launder money are not likely to fill out that form, are they?

So, in my minimal legal understanding, this sounds very much like an agency making changes to a congressionally passed law, without Congressional oversight or discussion.

The Supreme Court, in its Chevron Doctrine,  overruling its landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, just slapped down agencies for doing precisely what this agency has done. And guess what date the Supreme Court announced this? Yep, June 28, 2024, the same date that the members of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued its news release with its proposal for changes.

I do not believe in coincidences!