The Beneficial Ownership Information Report

This Month's Twists and Turns

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Mike Armour is a featured headliner on C-Suite Radio

Questions about the constitutionality of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA)have dogged it from the time it passed Congress. This month, those questions came to a head.

A Federal district court in Texas raised its own concerns about whether the act is constitutional. And on December 2, the court issued a temporary restraining order which suspended enforcement of the CTA nationwide.

That has touched off a month of court actions which have left the future of the CTA uncertain and with it, the future of the Beneficial Ownership Information Report.

To no one's surprise, the Department of Justice challenged the stay by appealing to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Three weeks later, a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit overturned the district court's action and lifted the restraining order.

Now, the plaintiffs in this case have been granted an opportunity to challenge the three-judge decision before the full panel of the Fifth Circuit Court. And as a preliminary to that hearing, the full Court reimposed the reestraining order.

The hearing is scheduled for early January. And the plaintiffs have filed a well-reasoned brief to support their case. To put it mildly, with the filing deadline for the Beneficial Ownership Information Report less than a month away, there's no small amount of confusion about how this will all play out.

I put together this episode, therefore, to bring people fully up to speed on the latest developments and to sketch the possible scenarios which may unfold.