As 2024 comes to a close, two major legal updates just released this week, are causing significant shifts for business owners. The first is a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Texas on the Corporate Transparency Act, a law passed in 2021 that would have required most small businesses to notify the Federal Treasury Department about who owns and/or controls their organization by submitting photo identification. As a result of this injunction, the law, which was set to take effect on January 1, 2025, has come to a screeching halt. The second update is that the Maine Department of Labor has finalized its rules on the Maine Paid Family Leave Act. Check out our short video, recorded by Attorney Michael Malloy, below, which breaks down these updates and provides guidance on what they mean for Maine business owners.
“Hey, it’s Michael Malloy. I hope you’re having a good December so far, it’s certainly been an interesting one for me. I’m getting ready to prepare and present on corporate Transparency Act and the Maine Family Medical Leave Act on December 5 at the Auburn Public Library and December 7 at the Bethel Public Library here in Maine and lo and behold, right before we’re getting ready to go live with these presentations, we have two tectonic shifts here for us. One is that the Maine Department of Labor has finalized its rule on the Paid Family Leave Act. We’ve got about 124 pages of commentary on what they did through two rounds of rulemaking. There hasn’t been a huge change in that. We’ll be talking about that at the upcoming presentations. But the real big message I wanted to get out was that a federal judge in Texas has just issued a nationwide injunction on the Corporate Transparency Act. That’s the law that was passed in 2021 that purported to require all, mostly all, small businesses, to notify the federal treasury department who owns and or controls their organization, submitting copies of photo identification that was set to take effect on January one, with fines of up to $500 a day if you had not filed by that deadline. As of December 3, we have a ban on the enforcement of that nationwide. So there’s a stay of execution there if you have not yet filed this is again, one order of a federal judge at the trial level in Texas. But federal judges can and do issue injunctions that have nationwide effect, and that’s what’s happened in this case. Now this is not done for all time. There can be appeals of this, and this could swing back and forth, depending on what the federal courts of appeals and perhaps even the Supreme Court might do. So if you’re interested in this, you do have a choice. You can go ahead and file anyways, and then you don’t have to worry about it. If you’re not wanting to file, then just keep a close eye on what’s happening here, and we’ll certainly do our best to keep our friends and clients informed of this in a timely fashion. And then, of course, we have some major political changes that will be happening in January, and whether a Republican controlled Congress and executive branch might try to repeal the law outright, even if it were to be upheld by appeals courts. So that’s really the big news here, which is that coming down to sort of the 11th hour, you do have a stay of execution if you have not filed your Corporate Transparency Act beneficial owner forms if you’re still interested in doing that, there’s nothing that stops you from doing it. You can go to fincen.gov/boi and follow the instructions I filed mine. I didn’t think it was particularly complicated, but if you have questions and you want to reach out, do feel free to drop us a line. Thank you very much, and hope you have a good holiday season.”