On Tuesday, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee marked up H.R. 2513, the “Corporate Transparency Act,” by Reps Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) and Peter King (R-New York). The committee passed the legislation on Wednesday by a vote of 43-16.

The legislation would require nearly every small business with fewer than 20 employees to file new reports on their beneficial ownership with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Existing businesses would have to comply with the new requirement within two years of the law’s enactment, while new businesses would have to comply upon incorporation and every business would have to comply annually.

FinCEN would require the disclosure of any individual who “receives substantial economic benefits from the assets of” a business. The legislation defers to regulators at the Treasury Department to define “substantial economic benefits.” Failure to comply with these reporting requirements would be a federal crime with civil penalties of up to $10,000 and criminal penalties of up to three years in prison.

The legislation includes a list of industries excluded from these reporting requirements. When the legislation was introduced in May, the Big “I” strongly advocated to have “insurance producers” added to the excluded list. Specifically, the Big “I” argued that insurance producers already provide this information to state regulators and that providing it to FinCEN would be duplicative. As a result of  Big “I” advocacy efforts, insurance producers were added to the list of industries excluded from this bill.

The Big “I” was the only producer group who advocated on behalf of agents with regards to this legislation.

Wyatt Stewart is Big “I” senior director of federal government affairs