With More Than 100 Other Groups, MSCI Asks U.S. Treasury Department To Protect Small Businesses
On Jan. 20, the Metals Service Center Institute joined more than 100 other trade associations in sending a letter to the U.S. Department of the Treasury asking that officials there take immediate action to protect small business owners from unnecessary privacy and cybersecurity risks stemming from the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA).
More specifically, the letter, which was organized by the Main Street Employers Coalition, asks the agency to purge the CTA database of beneficial ownership information submitted by domestic entities that are no longer required to file this information. It also asks the Treasury Department to quickly finalize its proposed rule that would formally exempt U.S. businesses from the reporting requirement.
The letter noted that, when finalized, that regulation would provide much-needed relief to more than 32 million domestic businesses swept into a regime intended to target international money laundering and terrorism financing, not law-abiding U.S. business owners. “Before Treasury corrected course, some 16 million domestic entities had complied with the CTA’s reporting requirements,” the letter explained. “These beneficial owners’ sensitive personal information — including their names, addresses, and passport or driver’s license numbers — remains in a database managed by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, exposing them to ongoing cybersecurity and unauthorized disclosure risks.”
As the letter makes clear, the CTA was designed to combat illicit finance, not warehouse sensitive personal information from small business owners who pose no risk to national security.
The letter highlights the urgency behind the request in the context of recent activity in the courts. “There are now 12 federal cases challenging the validity of the CTA, including two that have ruled at the District Court level that the CTA is unconstitutional,” the letter noted. “[T]he constitutional questions surrounding the CTA are far from settled.” Read more about the most recent decision concerning the CTA in the Jan. 11 edition of Connecting the Dots.