West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey is leading a coalition of 26 states in supporting a challenge to the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which harms small businesses and is a holdover of Biden-era efforts to exert federal authority over areas of traditional state control.
The CTA would require owners and part-owners of an estimated 32.6 million small businesses across the country to register personal information with the Financial Crimes Network or FinCEN.
FinCEN estimates that in just the first two years of CTA, American small businesses will be forced to spend more than 150 million hours and nearly $30 billion trying to comply with the CTA reporting requirements. Actual costs could be even higher.
“Burdensome regulations are killing our small businesses, which have long been the backbone of our economy in this country,” Attorney General McCuskey said. “Thankfully, President Trump has recognized how harmful CTA is to small businesses and has vowed not to enforce the Act.”
“I am proud to lead this coalition of attorneys general in supporting the key challenge to the legality of the law, settling the issue once and for all to restore states’ rights and to protect our small businesses now and into the future.”
The U.S. Treasury Department announced this week it won’t take enforcement action against American companies for not divulging ownership information under the CTA. The multistate amicus brief challenges the constitutionality of the law, arguing, among other things, that states have always had the authority to regulate corporations and establish corporate laws in their states, not the federal government, thus CTA disrupts the balance of federalism.
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming joined the West Virginia-, Kansas- and South Carolina-led amicus brief.
Original source can be found here.