Quiero saber acerca de...

69950

Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 233 / Wednesday, December 8, 2021 / Proposed Rules
jspears on DSK121TN23PROD with PROPOSALS4

difficult. Making any method of money laundering more difficult in the U.S.
would improve the national security of the United States by increasing barriers for illicit actors to covertly enter and act within the U.S. financial system.170 This may serve to deter the use of U.S.
entities for money laundering purposes.
Second, since the collection of BOI
would shed light upon the beneficial owners of U.S. entities, which may also provide insight into overall ownership structures, the proposed rule may promote a more transparent, and consequently more secure, economy.
Financial institutions with authorized access to such data would have key data pointsincluding potentially additional beneficial owners, given the differences between the definition in the proposed rule and the CDD Ruleavailable for their customer due diligence processes, which may decrease customer due diligence and other compliance burdens.171 FinCEN also expects increased transparency in ownership structures of entities to increase financial system integrity by reducing the ability of certain actors to hide monies through shell companies and other entities with obscured ownership information. This may discourage inefficient capital allocation designed primarily for non-business reasons, such as paying for professional services to set up and potentially capitalizing intermediate legal entities designed solely to obscure the relationship between a legal entity and its owners. In addition, the IRS could obtain access to BOI for tax administration purposes, which may provide benefits for tax compliance.
Third, the BOI reporting requirements would have the benefit of aligning the United States with international AML/
CFT standards, which would bolster 170 The CTA states that FinCEN may disclose BOI
upon receipt of a request from a federal agency on behalf of a law enforcement agency, prosecutor, or judge of another country, including a foreign central authority or competent authority or like designation, under prescribed conditions. 31
U.S.C. 5336c2Bii. Therefore, the sharing of BOI with international partners may also result in more efficient investigations of money laundering on a global scale, and also help U.S. law enforcement understand global money laundering networks that affect the United States.
171 It is worth noting that the CDD Rule also promotes transparency in ownership structures of legal entities, and thereby strengthens the U.S.
economy and national security. However, the CTAs BOI reporting requirement may improve upon these benefits by requiring that BOI be collected earlier in the life cycle of a company, at the time of company formation, rather than when the company opens a bank account. The CTA would also apply to a broader range of entities, since the CDD Rule covers only those institutions subject to financial institution customer due diligence requirements e.g., those with accounts at such institutions.

VerDate Sep<11>2014

19:51 Dec 07, 2021

Jkt 256001

support for such standards and strengthen cooperation with our partners, including the sharing of BOI, subject to appropriate protocols consistent with the CTA, in transnational investigations, tax enforcement, and the identification of national and international security threats.
The benefits of the proposed rule are difficult to quantify, but the prior description of these benefits point to their significance. FinCENs CDD Rule also did not quantify the benefits of collecting BOI, but rather included a breakeven analysis that concluded the CDD Rule would only have to reduce annual real illicit activity by between 0.16 percent roughly $0.38 billion in 2016, rising to 0.47 billion in 2025 and 0.6 percent roughly $1.46 billion in 2016, rising to $1.81 billion in 2025 to yield a positive net benefit.172 While the CDD Rule and proposed BOI rule require submission of BOI under different circumstances and to different parties, the breakeven analysis of the CDD Rule suggests that even a small percentage reduction in money laundering activities as a result of the proposed BOI rule could result in economically significant net benefits.
FinCEN does not currently propose a breakeven analysis for the proposed BOI
rule herein, as it continues to collect information on potential costs and benefits of the proposed rule through the rulemaking process. FinCEN
requests comment on data or methods that may inform estimates of potential benefits in this case.
iii. Alternatives The proposed rule is statutorily mandated, and therefore FinCEN has very limited ability to implement alternatives. However, FinCEN
considered certain significant alternatives that would be available under the statute.
One alternative would be to require reporting companies to submit BOI to FinCEN indirectly, by submitting the information to their jurisdictional authority who would then transmit it to FinCEN. In this case, jurisdictions would need to develop IT that would ultimately transmit data to FinCEN.173
As a lower bound estimate, if FinCEN
assumes that jurisdictions would only incur 10 percent of FinCENs stated initial IT development costs of approximately $33 million, then each jurisdiction would incur approximately 172 81

FR 29432.
further assumes under this alternative analysis that FinCEN would be responsible for aggregating this BOI, consistent with the CTA.
173 FinCEN

PO 00000

Frm 00032

Fmt 4701

Sfmt 4702

$3.3 million in development costs. As an upper bound estimate, if FinCEN
assumes that jurisdictions would incur close to 100 percent of the stated costs, then each of the jurisdictions could incur as much as approximately $33
million for IT development, plus additional ongoing data maintenance costs. At either end of the range, this scenario would impose significant costs on state or local governments.
FinCEN requested comment in the ANPRM on questions regarding the collection of BOI through partnership with state, local, and Tribal governments. In response to the ANPRM, several state authorities commented that they should not be involved in the process of collecting and transmitting BOI to FinCEN. Some states noted that they did not gather or index ownership information, and that states might need to change their statutes, and possibly engage in additional rulemaking to establish a system for collecting BOI and sharing such information with FinCEN. One state noted that the CTA requires FinCEN, not individual states, to collect, store, and protect the information collected, and that there is no obligation in the CTA that a state adopt new legislation in order to aid in the delivery of BOI.
Another state that currently collects some ownership information office, director, and member information for most business entities stated that reporting this information to FinCEN
would end up causing more problems than it solves because the owner information reported to the state, such as a member of an LLC, may not be the same individual that would be reported to FinCEN as a beneficial owner under the CTAs requirements.
Other states noted technical challenges with providing BOI to FinCEN, such as limitations in sharing images due to file sizes, which would require changes to states filing systems. One state noted that these types of changes could easily cost a million dollars or more. For all of these reasons, FinCEN decided not to propose an alternative in which reporting companies would submit BOI
to their jurisdictional authority.
However, FinCEN continues to consider whether there are feasible opportunities to partner with state authorities on the BOI reporting requirement, particularly where states already collect BOI, and FinCEN welcomes comments on this subject.174
174 One jurisdiction recommended that FinCEN
receive copies of registry databases on a fixed schedule in order to compare the number of FinCEN filers with the numbers from corporate registrars across the country. Another state raised numerous questions about relying on existing state
E:FRFM08DEP4.SGM

08DEP4