In this episode, Samantha Alecozay, a practicing faculty member at St. Mary’s University School of law, and the founding attorney of Alecozay Law Firm, PLLC, discusses her forthcoming article, “The Small Business Killer: How FinCEN Enforcement of the CTA Could Destroy the Last Bastion of the American Dream,” which will be published by the Lincoln Memorial University Law Review. In the meantime, it’s available to download on SSRN.

Alecozay describes the Corporate Transparency Act, which came into effect on January 1, 2024. The CTA is meant to create a national database of owner information for certain business entities with the goal of combating money laundering. But, as Alecozay details, the law both fails to target the most likely culprits and applies to a vast array of innocent businessowners. Failure to provide the detailed information requested may result in civil penalties of nearly $600 per day, and only a small portion of the millions of businesses affected are aware of the law’s requirement. Alecozay addresses the challenges of enforcing such a broadly applicable statute, as well as the potential for significant damages and disruption to businessowners caught unawares by the CTA’s requirements.

This episode was hosted by Michael L. Smith, Assistant Professor of Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law. Smith is on Twitter (or “X”) at @msmith750, and is on BlueSky at @[email protected].

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