The Costs and Unintended Consequences of Beneficial Ownership Reporting

Capitol Hill Briefing

April 18, 2019 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT

122 Cannon House Office Building

Featuring David Burton, Senior fellow, Heritage Foundation; Richard Hay, Partner, Stikeman Elliott; Karen Kerrigan, President, Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council; moderated by Diego Zuluaga, Policy analyst, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, Cato Institute.

Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have proposed new regimes for small‐business beneficial ownership reporting. The aim of such legislation is to eliminate opportunities for money laundering and financial crime. However, the proposals before Congress would place heavy new compliance costs on millions of America’s small businesses while continuing to provide opportunities for bad actors to engage in illicit financial activities. Beneficial ownership reporting would add to an already onerous anti‐money‐laundering/know‐your‐customer (AML/ KYC) regulatory burden, cited by community banks as the single most costly financial regulation. Furthermore, international experience with beneficial ownership reporting requirements suggests that it will be difficult to make such requirements work in the United States.

Join us on Thursday, April 18, to hear from a roster of experts about the flaws in existing proposals for beneficial ownership reporting and how to more efficiently prosecute financial crime.