[donmcronald]

I think all the identity verification schemes should start with the beneficial owners of companies. Governments have been lobbied to allow complete anonymity for the wealthy that own businesses doing questionable things while regular people are going to have to show id to buy food.

[palata]

> Governments have been lobbied to

Yep... and to make it worse, nobody is trying to push them towards looking at privacy-preserving age verification: instead technologists try to convince them that they just shouldn't regulate anything. Which... may not work so well.

[nickff]

As someone who lives in a jurisdiction which does require such disclosure: it is a significant inconvenience for small businesses, and no benefit to the general public.

[walrus01]

Do small businesses in your area have complicated ownership structures that it's significantly inconvenient to disclose the one family that owns, for an example small business , a plumbing repair company with 4 vans and 6 employees?

[roenxi]

They might? If they don't and it is trivial to identify the beneficial owner, why is it necessary to create a requirement to disclose? The practical experience is that people are quite bad at this sort of requirement, that may well be a source of problems and that on aggregate making it harder to do business has a notable impact [0] on general prosperity. Don't needlessly put barriers in front of people who create wealth.

It isn't a stretch to imagine that a small business owner literally doesn't have enough time in their life to maintain their own health and run their business. There are some pretty grim stories out there, I can tell one based on a friend of mine who was working ... I think 70 hour weeks. Sounded rough. It isn't actually crazy to say they may not have an hour free to figure out what form they need to fill out and where to file it, or that they'd be too sleep deprived to get it right. Assuming that this thing is the only thing they need to disclose and there aren't any other pieces of paperwork that need filing (which we all know there will be).

Sure if they have to they'll probably figure it out in most cases, maybe it is trivial. But the businesses where a straw broke the camel's back don't exist any more to point at as evidence. It is hard to know.

[0] https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation

[jeroenhd]

Lots of small businesses are operated from home. Their business information is scraped, transformed into personal information, sold to spammers and scammers, and in some cases abused in an automated fashion along with thousands of others.

Registering a phone number with the official company registry is sure to get you a scam call within the hour. People will come up to your house later to sell you power contracts you don't need, phone numbers you never wanted, and they will lie through their teeth to forge your signature if you don't agree. If you're unlucky, you'll be fighting a handful of scam companies in court within the first year, charging you thousands every month, because B2B contracts don't have the kind of protections customers have.

The only way to live a somewhat safe life as a small business owner is to have a dedicated phone number you never answer and a dedicated post office address where nobody lives.

These kinds of requirements made a lot of sense thirty years ago, but nowadays, with billions of people able to abuse every bit of information you publish instantly from anywhere while you're asleep, it makes a lot less sense.

In theory this documentation can be used to prevent scams and crimes, but actual enforcement of people's identities has become a problem, and the criminals have plenty of unsuspecting family members, homeless people, or mentally handicapped adults they can pressure into signing papers.

[Aerroon]

You get extra spam. Any data that ends up on those public lists will be used to spam you. Some websites will also correlate all the data they have on you too, so you can get that spam at home too.

Basically, you have no privacy if you start a small business under these kinds of rules.

[messe]

Precisely what inconvenience does it actually cause those businesses?

[Aerroon]

Your personal info becomes public because it's attached to the business information. This can include phone numbers, emails, full names, home addresses etc. All accessible online by anyone, including spammers, scammers, swatters etc.

[messe]

Yes... if you want to do business with people, then those people want to know who they do business with.

What a fucking tragedy.

I'm sorry you have to live in such a socialist hellscape.

[Aerroon]

Well, the problem is all the bad actors. Why don't you post your full name, home address, email address, and phone number right here? You "do business" too, right?

Should everyone in the world then be able to have access to the information I mentioned just because you work for someone?

[messe]

Umm, yes? My contact information is attached to the business names I trade under? Which is publicly available information.

Is this an alien concept to you?

[patrickk]

Shell companies for the ruling class, ever decreasing anonymity for the peasants.