[clamprecht]

I see no comments so far about the Corporate Transparency Act[1] and how it affects privacy with LLCs, etc. The US government will soon have a database of all (complying) beneficial owners. This database will eventually be hacked, leaked, shared with local law enforcement (further allowing it to be leaked).

How will the "rich people" maintain privacy/secrecy after the Corporate Transparency Act?

[1] https://www.uschamber.com/co/start/strategy/small-business-c...

[V__]

It seems really weird that you could do business with a company and not know who your actually doing business with. Also, it's kinda weird that there is no expectation of privacy except when you want to hide your assets.

[bdowling]

Often no member of the public does business with these corporations. E.g., a corporation set up by a celebrity to own a private home and keep her address out of public databases.

[BLKNSLVR]

I don't think that's any kind of justification. It doesn't matter whether it's a member of the public or another business or a government agency, there should be a known person or people responsible for the actions of any company to be held responsible for breach of contracts or bad actions. All business is based on contracts of agreements, and the whole thing would entirely fall apart if no one could be held accountable for breach of contract.

There's a lot of talk about the increase in KYC for individuals setting up accounts with banks and other financial institutions for reasons of anti money laundering. And yet anonymity is still allowed (and effectively encouraged) in business ownership which could facilitate far greater amounts of money laundering more easily.

Ever since reading about Mossack Fonseca it has bothered me (not confused me though, since the rules are made by the people who most benefit from it).

[nradov]

That rather misses the point. The entire reason we have corporations is to abstract those issues away. For most routine business it's better to deal with a faceless corporation instead of trying to personalize everything. The corporation itself can be held accountable for contract compliance and in extreme cases you can get a court order to seize corporate assets; that's much easier than trying to seize and auction off the CEO's personal art collection or whatever.

[BLKNSLVR]

My understanding is that Board members are intended to be personally responsible for actions of the company.

Which is why homeless people and ne'er-do-wells get paid $10 to sign a piece of paper (which remains unread) but states this responsibility for shell companies X, Y, and Z.

Also, by design, shell companies don't tend to have assets worth seizing.

[nradov]

Your understanding is mostly wrong under US federal and state law. Generally Board members are not personally liable for corporate debts. It is only possible to pierce the corporate veil in unusual situations, like if they engaged in criminal activity or illegally tried to put corporate assets into their own names in an attempt to hide those from creditors or violate a court order.

[smallmancontrov]

The opaqueness is transparently self-serving for those who own the stinkiest parts of our economy. We should demand better.

[balderdash]

Besides retail transactions the counterparties know who they’re doing business with, it’s just that the public is not privy to it.

[nradov]

As a customer or vendor why would I care who the beneficial owners are? Either the product works or it doesn't. Either they pay their bills or they don't. I don't want to waste time digging into their internal details.

[OtherShrezzing]

If you're a vendor, particularly of financial products, you'll likely be compelled by law to know who the beneficial owners are so that you don't inadvertently supply financial services to a hostile state or sanctioned entity.

[Gormo]

> The US government will soon have a database of all (complying) beneficial owners. This database will eventually be hacked, leaked, shared with local law enforcement (further allowing it to be leaked).

The BOI requirements of the CTA were recently ruled unconstitutional (as exceeding federal commerce-clause power and encroaching on powers reserved to states) in the first major test case before a federal court. [1]

Since it was ruled unconstitutional on reserved powers grounds, they didn't even reach the 4th amendment implications, but there may be further consideration as these cases make their way up the court heirarchy.

It's definitely not certain that this database is going anywhere.

> How will the "rich people" maintain privacy/secrecy after the Corporate Transparency Act?

The same way they do now. The CTA as formulated was only binding on non-publicly-traded companies with 20 or fewer employees. It also explicitly exempted companies whose primary business activity is financial services or asset holdings. This is why many regard it as an attack on small business disguised as an accountability measure for big business.

[1] https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/corporates/cta-un...

[altruios]

Name a company that is legal to run that SHOULD have it's owner's identity hidden...

Only those that dwell in darkness fear the light. Exposing who own these LLC's seems like a solid 'pro-truth' move for America.

[drewg123]

A company owned by an instagram influencer, youtube celebrity, only fans star, etc to sell their merch could easily lead to doxing the influencer. People in those industries take advantage of loopholes to hide LLC ownership specifically to avoid getting SWATted, having creeps hide outside their house and SA them, etc.

[altruios]

Knowing who owns the LLC is ever so slightly different than also knowing their home address. Knowing THAT someone owns company X doesn't mean you know their location as well.

That's all I care about or want: To know 'who', not where 'who' is.

[SJC_Hacker]

Yeah, once you have someone's name, as well as some other identifying info such as approximate location and age finding out where the live is rather trivial.

[drewg123]

Heck, some states list the address of the owner.

One of her friends registered an llc with herself as the owner, and one of her followers looked her llc up and found her real name and address via the state llc registration web site. He then hid in the bushes outside her house and "surprised" her. Leading her to close the llc and move.

[cess11]

Right, and then you can check out where they live and whether they're nice people.

Seems good to me.

[matsemann]

How could this lead to doxxing?

[Gormo]

Lead to? It is doxxing.

[matsemann]

How? If they're selling a service, knowing who you're buying from isn't doxxing.

[Gormo]

Who you do business with is up to you, and you are totally free to avoid firms that won't answer your questions about their ownership structure.

That's got nothing to do with attempts to force business owners to submit sensitive personal information into a central database, which you wouldn't even have access to unless you had corrupt influence over the organization maintaining it.

[cbsmith]

Classic, "if you've done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide".

The unscrupulous aspect might not be the company, but the audience. It shouldn't be that hard to imagine that owners of companies might be targeted for harassment, violence, etc., and might even be reluctant to invest in a company at all because of the problems that would come from being publicly listed in association with that company. One might argue that ownership comes with these consequences, but of course the impact might be broader, extending to friends and family members, who wouldn't necessarily have any ownership stake in the business. The Internet being the Internet, this tends to be a particular problem for women and minorities.

Then there's cases where the information could be harmful to the company, not the owner.

There's cases where they're just trying to avoid PR/political problems that can be perfectly defensible, but if you're having to defend them, you've already lost the PR/political battle. The Internet being the Internet, even if they purge all public political positions from their personal discourse, even historical political activity going back well before they ever founded a business could be a problem. I know business owners who make sure their business avoids engaging in anything that would put them on any side of a political or hot button issue, and they extend that to themselves because their name is attached to the business.

Simple example: I know one person who is involved with shelters for battered women. They're fine that everyone knows they're involved in it, but there are some businesses they've invested in where they're a silent partner specifically because their partners don't want the harassment/violence/ill will that can come with that.

[Gormo]

> Name a company that is legal to run that SHOULD have it's owner's identity hidden...

Every single one of them. If you don't want to do business with a firm that's evasive about its ownership, that's your prerogative, but forcing anyone engaged in business to have sensitive personal information about them recorded in a centralized database that will be a beacon for corruption and abuse is invasive, anti-social, and dangerous.

> Only those that dwell in darkness fear the light.

You are of course welcome to post your full name, home address, phone number, social security number, annual income itemized by source, credit score, and any other personal information you feel should be exposed to "light" right here in this thread.

[MC68328]

My credit score is 850. What now?

It's funny that every bit of that information is demanded by employers, and they usually don't reciprocate. It's only considered "sensitive" information because our society is incompetent and corrupt. The secrecy that protects the rich and powerful is an artifact of that corruption. In a just and competent society, none of that information could be used against us, because we wouldn't be using identifiers as secret keys, and harassers could be identified and punished.

If you have to hide to feel free, you're not actually free.

[Gormo]

> My credit score is 850. What now?

Name, address, phone, SSN, credit card numbers, tax returns, itemized income statement, health records, SMS logs, phone logs, email account exports, relationship history.

> It's only considered "sensitive" information because our society is incompetent and corrupt.

"Society" is an abstract concept, and the concrete reality that it represents is a large collection of people who are mostly strangers to you, and whose interests and values are by no means guaranteed to align with yours even when they are totally honest.

> The secrecy that protects the rich and powerful is an artifact of that corruption.

The same secrecy protects you and me. And at the end of the day, I don't care one bit about "the rich", and "the powerful" are exactly who I want safeguards against.

> In a just and competent society

...the streets would be paved with gold, champagne would flow from the taps, we'd all live to be a thousand, and our pets would speak to us in perfect English.

> none of that information could be used against us

You are of course free to use HTTP instead of HTTPS for all of your web-based data transmission.

> If you have to hide to feel free, you're not actually free.

I think I'll stick with imperfect freedom in this reality over perfect freedom in a nonexistent one.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Anyone touching anything in the vicinity of abortion services. Pornography LLC. Any number of anonymous chat platforms.

[axus]

If I ran a small service for an online game , I'd want to keep my identity secret. A small (but loud) number of gamers are toxic.

[lvass]

I hosted some online game server once and toxic isn't how I'd describe the issue. The people were all nice and gentle, except this one guy, after I banned him for targeted suicide encouragement, he spent months harassing everyone who ever joined the server until I shut it down. Thankfully we didn't know each other's identities.

[axus]

There was a small game I play, one guy posted a picture of a plane ticket to the developer's country saying "I will come to your house with a gun. This is an actionable death threat". Nothing came of it, banned for one season.

[sillysaurusx]

Sex toy product design. I happen to speak from personal experience; a family member was working at a conservative job that wouldn't view his side business favorably.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Never before had it crossed my mind that some professional had a load of CAD sex toy blueprints on their workstation.

[sillysaurusx]

They actually sculpted the molds by hand, since this was back when 3D printers were crude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31667798

3D printers only just barely became viable as prototyping tools for molds in the last few years. Specifically the Form 3.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Well, that was a fun read. Thanks for sharing.

[eddd-ddde]

Well that's a different issue, that's like hiding my identity because some company won't hire people of my colour.

You don't fight discrimination by making yourself anonymous.

[eppp]

Not everyone wants to be an avatar for a social ill. Some people just want to live their lives and be left alone.

[altruios]

Just for the sake of completeness: do you think the customers of your family member's business have any informational rights to know to whom they are giving their money to? If not, Does that lack of a right translate to every other company? How do you reconcile 'vote with your dollar' without knowing who you are voting for?

I agree that is a sensitive issue - but only in so far as 'gotta cover their ass' from a conservative job... which is... a weird place for a sex-toy designer to be... (which raises far more questions about the quality of toy-design if it isn't supporting a livelihood). Appeasement to conservatives is rarely a good strategy... appeasement through omission of data about who they are hiring seems like your family member put themselves in this precarious situation on their own volition. Everyone's got to eat, though, so can't be too bothered :)

But hiding who you are: feels morally dubious and self serving in that case you present.

[nickpp]

> But hiding who you are: feels morally dubious and self serving in that case you present.

I wonder: do you hold the same views when it comes to regular people's online privacy?

[altruios]

No, I hold the privacy of a public company differently than a private citizen. If you do business - the stipulation for that is you should become 'public', in so much that there is a record of who owns a company... it should be the consumer's right to easily access knowledge whom they do business with: we don't live in a contraband-fueled market, our goods and services are 'above board' and should face public scrutiny.

[nickpp]

I agree about the transparency when it comes to a business's activity: its goods and services.

But a business's ownership is about the privacy of its owners/stock holders - which are regular people. Saying their privacy is "morally dubious and self serving" is akin to saying regular people's need for privacy is morally dubious and self serving. Is the old anti-anonymity argument of "if you're all legit, what do you have to hide?!"

There is an argument to be made here though when said owner is another corporate entity - that is not a person so maybe it doesn't deserve any privacy.

[axus]

It would be fair if the customers were given the same ability to pay anonymously.

Maybe escrow services that did not hide their identity would solve the problem (for a price)?

[BeFlatXIII]

> How do you reconcile 'vote with your dollar' without knowing who you are voting for?

"Vote with your dollar" is for morons. I don't reconcile it because it is irrelevant.

[toolz]

A company that specializes in helping people escape from horrible rulers would be an example. Not everything deserves to be public. There are always as many good reasons to hide as there are entities that need to be hidden from.

[newsclues]

If a company that specializes in upsetting “rulers” their security shouldn’t be security through obscurity and it would be harder to trust than Former Spec Op Dudes Name Incorporated

Because if you insist on privacy for the “helping people escape rulers” business the money laundering and criminals will suddenly be in that building!

[toolz]

Criminals and launderers have never and will likely never need to incorporate. Sure, it's a tool they might use, but at best you'd take some of their margins away from them. Doesn't seem like a great trade to me, stealing some of the criminals profits in exchange for exposing the people who need privacy.

[BLKNSLVR]

Launderers are always incorporated. If they weren't, they wouldn't be able to launder.

[toolz]

that's not true, you can launder money many ways without incorporating or even using a company...just one example would be paying cash for used vehicles and reselling them...or buying crypto mining hardware - that's just off the top of my head as someone with zero experience laundering. I have to imagine the pros are better at coming up with ways than I am...

[ericd]

As always, obscurity is one (often very helpful) layer of a multilayered defensive strategy. The meme that it's useless needs to go away. If you have a safe at home, you should probably hide its existence, because even if power tools couldn't reliably crack a safe (they can), there's always the $5 wrench strategy.

[Eji1700]

> Only those that dwell in darkness fear the light.

Yeah this has worked out so well historically.

The whole point of privacy laws is to allow for the idea of bad actors on the other side of the equation. I'm all for tightening up loopholes but off hand sayings like this are thrown around all the time and they're terrible logic that isn't at all backed up by evidence.

[janalsncm]

> This database will eventually be hacked, leaked, shared with local law enforcement

We could extend this argument to individual taxpayer info too. Have these things happened with taxpayer info, and does that mean the IRS shouldn’t get to know where you live?

[hughesjj]

> Have these things happened with taxpayer info

Actually, yes. Same with voter registration. Hell in WA state voter registration is public knowledge, along with whether you voted in any given election.

Try it if you want it, but read the terms of service. Lots of "if you use this for advertising it's a felony" for anyone looking to grift

https://www.sos.wa.gov/washington-voter-registration-databas...

[yieldcrv]

It was immediately challenged as soon as citizens could get standing this year

A judge ruled it unconstitutional - narrowly only for the organizations and their members that filed the case - and its currently being appealed by the US gov

its going to the 5th circuit though so rich people don't have to do anything, this regulation is DOA

its interesting what cases make headline news and whats relegated to law journals

[cj]

> its interesting what cases make headline news and whats relegated to law journals

It certainly made headlines to people its impacts. 2 of my law firms sent out alerts. (They send out alerts maybe 1-2 per year whenever a significant legal change is happening - I think the last alert was the Wayfair sales tax Supreme Court decision)

[yieldcrv]

yeah I filed a flurry of anonymous LLCs via intermediaries via my lawyer at the end of last year since the new law initially only affects business entities created on or after Jan 1 2024, and older ones starting to need reporting just in Jan 2025

I took one look at the law and figured that I won’t have to do it by 2025 because it’ll get declared unconstitutional

so far my bingo board is working out

[DyslexicAtheist]

isn't the CTA US only? or would it have jurisdiction for a structure in UAE, Channel Islands, Dublin, or Luxembourg etc.

When it comes to actual personal wealth management (not corporate tax optimization) there is also Austria, Lichtenstein, Geneve, Monaco, etc which are all very livable for HNWI and their families.

[mamonster]

Lichtenstein isn't super livable, there is absolutely nothing to do in Vaduz.

Geneva and Monaco sure but one thing you have to realize about Geneva/Monaco is that for simply HNWI(UHNWI is 25 mil and up) Monaco is too expensive and Geneva has a horrible ratio of living costs to living quality(the expensive hotel quarter is right next to the "open drug/prostitution market at midnight on a Saturday" quarter). Geneva basically lost its lustre for 10-20 million networth foreigners after Cologny became saturated and overpriced over the last 10-15 years.

[Scoundreller]

Did you mean Andorra, not Austria?

[CodeWriter23]

> How will the "rich people" maintain privacy/secrecy after the Corporate Transparency Act?

By hiring ex-CIA Agents having experience with setting up shell corporations after said act.

[clamprecht]

Then I ask the same question you just sidestepped: how will the ex-CIA agents maintain privacy/secrecy after the Act?

[CodeWriter23]

Ask them, I’m not a subject matter expert on such things. I can however infer they will have that capability because shell corporations are a fundamental building block of all their ops.

[arminiusreturns]

Rich people get out of it because all their main hidey-holes (Banking, Insurance, etc) are exempted.

[nerdawson]

> This database will eventually be hacked, leaked, shared with local law enforcement (further allowing it to be leaked).

In the UK, all of that information is freely available to anyone via Companies House.

[Analemma_]

Companies should not be allowed to have secret ownership; I don't give a shit if this data is leaked. Corporations are a legal fiction, and so they have no right to or expectation of privacy, like there should be for persons with e.g. individual tax records.

The basic operation of markets depends on having as little information asymmetry as possible between opposite sides of a transaction, and part of that means knowing who you're doing business with to make informed decisions about the reputation of your counterparty.

[Gormo]

You are of course free to decide whether or not to do business with an organization based on how well you know/trust the ownership, and decline do do business that are evasive about their ownership at your own prerogative.

I'm not sure why ownership needs to be openly published in advance -- you can always query them confidentially through private correspondence -- or how having ownership compiled into a federal database that you don't have access to (unless you have corrupt influence over the relevant agency) will help you.

[kylecordes]

Large publicly traded companies sometimes already have pseudo-secret/anonymous ownership, with most of the shares held by a giant mutual funds etc.

[Gormo]

Large publicly traded companies are entirely exempted from this legislation.

[jollyllama]

Doesn't it only apply to new filings? Aren't all the old entities grandfathered in?

[PopAlongKid]

No. New entities have a 90-day window to file. Entities existing before 2024 must file no later by Jan 1 2025.

[erellsworth]

> How will the "rich people" maintain privacy/secrecy after the Corporate Transparency Act?

I mean, I think the whole point of the act is to stop "rich people" from maintaining privacy/secrecy in regards to the businesses they own. And that's a good thing.

[Gormo]

> I mean, I think the whole point of the act is to stop "rich people" from maintaining privacy/secrecy in regards to the businesses they own.

No, the act has little effect on "rich people". It applies only to non-public firms with 20 or fewer employees, and exempts most firms in the banking and finance industries.

It encumbers your local barbershop and the mom-and-pop restaurant on the corner, but the "rich people" get a pass.

> And that's a good thing.

It turns out that "rich people" have as much right to maintain the privacy of sensitive personal information as anyone else.

[klyrs]

You seem to be under the impression that the Act will have its intended effect and that OC was bemoaning that. I read this as, "with the Act in place, how will its intent be subverted by those in power"