December 2024

What you need to know The Corporate Transparency Act is an anti-money laundering act, and comes with something called the Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirement that had a January 1st, 2025 deadline. Though this law was a long time coming, it probably will stand in the end, at least with some kind of modification. What happened was that a federal judge in Texas initially ruled this law as possibly unconstitutional and the enforcement needed to be stalled... Reasonable enough. Then, this Monday, a higher court stated, "No, the injunction is overturned. The January 1st deadline sticks." The Treasury then came back and said, "All right, January 1st isn't reasonable for people who've waited. We're going to push the deadline back to January 13th." Well, then, the New Orleans Fifth U.S. Court Circuit reinstated the injunction! There is no way to tell what's going to happen next. We cannot say when...

If you felt the shockwaves in the market yesterday, you're certainly not alone. What happened and how does this affect you? Let's get some context. Yesterday, markets dropped about 3%, large cap US growth stocks as much as 4%. That's a pretty big hit for one day. What are the factors behind that? Primarily, the Fed indicated that it will only cut rates maybe twice in 2025. In fact, the estimate is maybe an aggregate drop of a third of a percent between the two cuts. That is next to nothing. Up until yesterday, markets in 2024 were up as much as 28%. Those markets are highly concentrated and very sensitive to any sort of negative news. So why did the Fed react the way it did? The thing to understand with the Fed is that it has a dual mandate. It's rather unusual in the world. Most Federal Reserve...

  A recent ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has significant implications for the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and its beneficial ownership information reporting requirements. How does this impact investors who were required to report by the end of the year? On December 3, 2024, Judge Amos Mazzant issued a nationwide preliminary injunction halting the enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act. The court determined that the CTA likely exceeds constitutional boundaries by infringing on states' rights under the 10th Amendment. The key word here is "likely". This is not the final word on the matter. The injunction temporarily suspends the requirement for businesses to report beneficial ownership information to the Treasury, which had a deadline of January 1, 2025. However, until appeals are resolved, that deadline will be delayed. In the meantime, entities are not obligated to comply with the CTA's reporting requirements. The...