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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28060 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Inching closer to the eradication of financial privacy

FinCEN has new rules taking effect over the next year and a half that require basically all companies to disclose the "beneficial owners".

The rule will require most corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities created in or registered to do business in the United States to report information about their beneficial owners—the persons who ultimately own or control the company, to FinCEN. Designed to protect U.S. national security and strengthen the integrity and transparency of the U.S. financial system, the rule will help to stop criminal actors, including oligarchs, kleptocrats, drug traffickers, human traffickers, and those who would use anonymous shell companies to hide their illicit proceeds.

I won't quote the whole thing but it's a short and easy read.

This statement is a bit disturbing:

FinCEN will engage in additional rulemakings to: (1) establish rules for who may access beneficial ownership information, for what purposes, and what safeguards will be required to ensure that the information is secured and protected [...]

This provides another avenue for rogue members of institutions to leak private information to hurt people they don't like. Depending on the rules that ultimately come out, this avenue could be very wide, especially since there is often discretion over when to enforce the rules.

My revulsion to these rules goes beyond the erosion of privacy, though. It should be possible to be a citizen of a place without exposing your entire life to the mercy of its government. You can't avoid being at its physical mercy when you're within its territory, but you can leave now and then. The way financial rules work in the U.S., you have to report and pay taxes on all finances, even work and investments in other countries. You also have to pay taxes on income that doesn't affect anybody else (income you haven't spent). With these new rules, you might have to pay a reputational tax when wealth you were keeping private gets exposed. I would much prefer citizenship or investment in a place to be like membership in a club - you're judged by your behavior at club events, not by your life outside it.

Does this apply to citizens themselves, or just owners/investors in companies? Frankly I don't give a shit about the privacy of the extremely wealthy financial class. They deserve to have far less privacy.

I'm much more concerned about the average joe being manipulated by psychologically invasive advertising that uses personal data to become extremely effective.

Income tax was originally only created for the ultra wealthy. It probably doesn't matter who the rule is targeted at right now, you can be pretty sure that it will apply to everyone within a decade.

And the ultra wealthy can afford to hire accountants and legal advisors to deal with the reporting rules. For everyone else it will be an additional burden to entry that makes business ownership and self employment more difficult.

And the ultra wealthy can afford to hire accountants and legal advisors to deal with the reporting rules. For everyone else it will be an additional burden to entry that makes business ownership and self employment more difficult.

This will cease to be an issue relatively soon, with GPT-4 likely being competent enough and future models even better at helping out an unsophisticated consumer who can't afford an accountant.

I'm not well versed with any licensing restrictions that may or may not be in place in the US, but an educated, well-versed entitity to advise you is now cheap and available via a phone.

I presume if the company is big enough that they're running into context window issues and such with a modern ML model, they can afford said human accountant!

Ooh that'll be nice! Not having to have an accountant. I can hardly wait.

I already use GPT for quite a few things, but I feel like I need to be using it more. Soon it'll be incorporated into the majority of online tools I'd imagine.

This rule could only plausibly apply to the ultra wealthy. Non-ultra-wealthy people don't own nominee shell companies.

The rule does not impact just conventional "shell" companies, by its plain text: the definition of 'substantial control' is broad enough to plausibly cover a lot of managers and administrators in small businesses. It might not get enforced that way immediately, and maybe (if not plausibly) even without a ton of middle management getting voluntarily identified to the federal government, but it's definitely nowhere near as clear as you're claiming.

Unfortunately, that "senior officer" is category is far less restrictive than it sounds from the name:

The term “senior officer” means any individual holding the position or exercising the authority of a president, chief financial officer, general counsel, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, or any other officer, regardless of official title, who performs a similar function.

And the rule makes clear that this is intentional:

The final rule adopts the proposed 31 CFR 1010.380(d)(4)(iii) with minor clarifications to minimize the potential confusion noted by commenters. The CTA makes clear that individuals who benefit from this exception must be acting “solely as an employee” and derive control or economic benefits “solely from the[ir] employment status.”

And :

FinCEN notes that the title of the officer ultimately is not dispositive, as the definition of “senior officer” and other indicators of substantial control make clear. Rather, the underlying question is whether the individual is exercising the authority or performing the functions of a senior officer, or otherwise has authority indicative of substantial control.

This is not something limited to just the ultra-wealthy or clear shell corporations; there are absolutely a number of small businesses where the capabilities attached to these titles in larger corporations instead are devolved to individual employees (some, like accountants and chief marketing staff, not even full-time!). There's a fair argument that FinCen won't enforce the rule this way, but it's ironed out in the rule.

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