This is the Cato Daily podcast for Wednesday, January 8, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown.

If you own even a very small business, a new federal requirement is demanding a treasure trove of information about that ownership and the ownership of tens of millions of companies.

It creates new avenues for harassment of business owners and yet more government snooping on private activity.

It was Jennifer Shelf and Brent Skorup explain the importance of the current challenges to the new law.

We spoke last week.

Brent, I want to start with you.

Can you tell me the details, at least the salient, controversial details of the Corporate Transparency Act?

This was a law buried in a large omnibus bill a few years ago.

It requires essentially every small state chartered LLC and nonprofit corporation to

reveal the sense of personal information of people involved in the LLC. So I mean,

it could be a one person contracting company or any small business.

But you have to reveal to the federal government,

to FinCEN and the Treasury Department,

sensitive information, your address, your name, passport,

and so on that they can use for law enforcement purposes

for all kinds of alleged financial crimes.

Jem, what is the rationale for something like that?

I mean, the upshot for something like that

is that it outlaws the anonymous ownership of companies.

Those that were in favor of this law were looking towards making sure

that you could always trace the money in an illicit finance circumstance and a money laundering

...