Gavin/Solmonese’s Anne Eberhardt explores the opposition to the Corporate Transparency Act of 2019, stemming in part from privacy concerns and worry over the potential compromise of preserving market competitive forces.
On October 22, 2019, the House voted to pass the Corporate Transparency Act of 2019, a bill to require disclosure of the “ultimate beneficial owners,” or UBO, of U.S. companies. While you may not remember the news from that day – even if it had made the headlines, we’ve had a Presidential impeachment, a global pandemic and a major financial meltdown in the interim – something truly remarkable happened: The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association and the Heritage Foundation were united in their opposition to the law.
While its companion bill, the True Incorporation Transparency for Law Enforcement – or TITLE Act – has not yet reached a vote in the Senate, similar legislative efforts have either been adopted or are being proposed in other countries as alarms have been sounding at the growing awareness of the link between anonymously held companies and criminal activity.
The saga of the demand for UBO disclosures finds itself at the intersection of several deeply held and often conflicting democratic values: individual rights, privacy, transparent governance and…
