In a column that ran in today’s edition of The Tennessean, NFIB State Director Jim Brown explains that the little-known Corporate Transparency Act is a disaster for small business owners, who could face fines or even jail time for violating a law they know little if anything about.

Millions of small business owners may soon get a rude awakening: A $10,000 fine, $591 a day for any late filings, and up to two years in prison.

Such are the penalties associated with a barely known mandate that went into effect on Jan. 1 called the Corporate Transparency Act.

A staggering 32.6 million small businesses – hundreds of thousands of them in Tennessee – are now required to send the U.S. Treasury Department the personal information of their “beneficial owners,” which basically means anyone who controls or owns a good chunk of the business.

But according to a recent NFIB survey, 83% of small businesses don’t know this mandate exists. They’re at risk of being punished for failing to comply with something that never should have passed in the first place, while their financial and legal advisors are scrambling to provide meaningful guidance in this regulatory tsunami.

What was Congress thinking? When both parties united to create this mandate, they patted themselves on the back for supposedly tackling financial crime and even terrorism, both noble efforts. But burdening millions of honest small businesses is the worst way to pursue this goal.

The mandate is a case study of everything that’s wrong with Washington, D.C. It was buried in a massive bill that passed in 2021, sliding under almost everyone’s radar. Yet unlike almost every other regulation, it solely targeted small businesses. Not a single medium-size or big business is affected — not one. Why target Main Street while utterly ignoring Wall Street?