Chief Investment Strategist, The Freeport Society
In case you need a reminder as to why exactly we formed The Freeport Society, here it is…
My accountant called me yesterday to ask if I had filed my FinCEN BOIR forms this year.
Huh?
I didn’t have the foggiest idea what a BOIR form was or who or what the hell FinCEN was. It sounded like a nonsensical alphabet soup of letters.
So, she told me.
A BOIR form is a Beneficial Ownership Information Report.
And FinCEN is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Great!
It gets better.
Starting January 1, all corporations and LLCs must report their beneficial owners to the federal government or face potential fines of $500 per entity per day and up to two years in federal prison.
I’ve opened around a dozen LLCs, partnerships, and other company entities over the years. In no case was the identity of the owner ever in question. Most of the companies had “Sizemore” in their name, for crying out loud. All have legal registered agents. All have federal tax IDs. And every single last one of them has had its income flow through to my tax return.
I also file franchise tax reports at the state level every single year. So, there are countless government eyes that already have access to my information.
And yet…
Guilty Before Proven Innocent
I got to spend the better part of an afternoon filing a dozen FinCEN BOIR forms that I am 100% certain will sit in some government database until the end of time without ever seeing human eyes.
But on the off chance that someone happened to look… or if Uncle Sam decided he needed a reason to investigate me for any reason or no reason at all… I would have potentially been exposed to financial ruin and even prison had I not complied.
And why are we going through this entire exercise?
To fight money laundering and sanctions evasion, of course!
Every business owner in America now has a little more paperwork and a little less freedom so that we can, in theory, track down illicit Russian money.
I pay my taxes. You should too.
Of course, we can and should demand via the ballot box that our government tax us less and use the money it takes from us more responsibly.
We should also use every legal means at our disposal to avoid paying a single cent more than we absolutely have to. But we’re never going to avoid the tax man altogether. As Benjamin Franklin put it, the only certainties in life are death and taxes.
Still, financial privacy is another matter.
I have no reason to obscure the ownership of my LLCs. But plenty of people do. Maybe you have a vindictive ex-spouse or an aggressive creditor after you. Maybe you are a high-profile celebrity or a wealthy person who is a potential target for extortion or even kidnapping. Or maybe you simply don’t want to give people you don’t know the ability to fish around in your financial affairs… or to have your information in a format that a hacker or rogue government leaker could get their hands on.
Unfortunately, FinCEN doesn’t see it that way.
I’d love to tell you I have a magic solution for you… other than to remind you to file your BOIR form to avoid egregious penalties. You can deal with that mess here: https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/.
But the truth is that I see this all getting worse before it gets better, particularly if the shadow presidential candidate steps into the running for the November elections.
Here at The Freeport Society, we don’t care about being Republican or Democrat. Rather, we care about the right to freedom and liberty. We want to protect ourselves and our members against the financial recklessness that has characterized every administration since the 1970s.
With the presidential candidates currently making a bid for the White House, I expect we’re only going to find ourselves deeper in the chaos. And if the shadow candidate does what we expect, it’s going to get a whole lot worse, a whole lot faster.
Our friend, Louis Navellier, shares details about who this person is, why we’re so worried about his presence, and how to prepare so you can survive and thrive,
We may not be able to halt government overreach, but we can absolutely do everything in our power to minimize our exposure to it. I can also tell you that wealth buys you options. And that’s certainly something we can control.
Watch Louis’ special presentation now.
And keep reading The Freeport Navigator. We’re in this together for life, liberty, and the pursuit of wealth.