Their Take: NFIB State Director Discusses New Reporting Requirements for Small Business Owners

In a conversation with ABC 15’s Ben Brown, NFIB State Director Chad Heinrich discussed new beneficial ownership reporting requirements for small business owners, which took effect January 1, 2024. Under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), more than 32 million businesses will be required to report information about their business and business owners to a new federal database maintained by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

“It’s really intrusive in the amount of personal information it’s asking for,” Heinrich said. “At a very basic level, the state governments require that when you create a company that is incorporated, that’s not you personally, that you disclose an address and contact information. This federal law adds another duplicative layer of information going further into the depths, including your birthdate, federal identification numbers, such as your passport or ID and other personal information.”

Worse yet, Heinrich added, few small business owners are aware of the new requirements.

“We have roughly 300,000 members in the country and from our research, 90% of our members who are pretty engaged small business owners didn’t even know of the requirement.”

View the full interview here. .

NFIB opposed the Corporate Transparency Act, which requires corporations and limited liability companies (LLCs) with 20 or fewer full-time employees to file new reports with the Treasury Department’s FinCEN bureau containing the personally identifiable information of small business owners.