The CTA Compliance Wrinkle No One's Talking About

The Corporate Transparency Act is now in effect, imposing complex reporting requirements on every small business in the country, and many large ones too. But what if the person best equipped to assist those businesses with compliance – your local CPA --wasn't allowed to do so? To explore this dynamic, we talked to Jim Hamill, Director of Tax Practice at the Albuquerque-based accounting firm Reynolds, Hix, and Company and an Associate Professor of Accounting at Texas A&M Commerce. Jim explains how the CTA puts tax professionals in a bind and forces them to choose between helping their clients and possibly engaging in unauthorized practices. He also explores how difficult the CTA's "beneficial owner" definition is to pin down, why compliance will cost small businesses far more than FinCEN estimates, and how it is all unlikely to deter money laundering.