The National Federation of Independent Business has launched a new campaign urging Congress to repeal a mandate requiring small businesses to disclose personal information.
The federal Beneficial Ownership Information mandate, or BOI, which was passed in January 2021, calls for businesses of 20 employees or fewer that earn below $5 million annually to provide personal information for all employees and owners, such as their full legal names, dates of birth, home addresses, and a copy of a government-issued ID.
The NFIB, the country’s largest small business advocacy group, called the mandate “highly invasive” and contended that it affects nearly 300,000 small businesses in Mississippi. Affected Mississippi fields, according to the NFIB, are agriculture, construction, and retail, among others. The advocacy group says these businesses are at risk of steep fines and jail time if they do not comply, regardless of their ability to do so.
NFIB Director of Federal Government Relations Josh McLeod said that most businesses are still unaware of these regulations – more than four years after the fact – despite them posing potentially devastating ramifications.
“Very few businesses know about this,” McLeod said. “About 83% of them in America didn’t know about the BOI, which is very concerning because the potential penalties for a small business in non-compliance are criminal penalties up to $10,000 in fines and up to two years in prison.”
McLeod further asserted that business owners could be blindsided by fines or imprisonment because the government is not required to provide written notice via subpoena that their documents will be accessed.
“Another thing that makes the BOI invasive is that state and international law enforcement and intelligence agencies do not have to have a subpoena in order to access that information,” McLeod continued. “Our members have a lot of 4th amendment and privacy concerns regarding protecting their personal, identifiable information. I think that is very concerning and something we need to guard against.”
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McLeod also noted that higher-up workers in a business who might not have any ownership, such as a kitchen manager for example, would also have to file. And if a business were to replace them, that new employee would have to provide their personal information as well.
“This is not a one-time filing,” McLeod said. “Anytime any Beneficial Ownership Information changes, there are 30 days that it has to be updated. If it’s not updated, they get into those civil and criminal penalties.”
In 2025, President Donald Trump called for an exemption from the mandate for small businesses, which ultimately saved 32 million businesses across the country over $128 billion in costs they would otherwise have incurred under the BOI mandate, NFIB officials said.
However, without congressional action, the mandate could be fully reinstated once Trump’s term ends in early 2029, which is exactly what the NFIB is seeking to avoid.
“We know that the calendar for members of Congress is shrinking by the day, so now is that time for a sense of urgency to really lock in that $128 billion in savings,” McLeod said. “It was a hugely consequential action by President Trump. Now, we need Congress to step in and either make that exemption law or repeal the entire mandate, which we’ve got huge support from the Mississippi delegation.”
McLeod said that the NFIB is communicating with U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) to work out a formal repeal of the BOI, but most of what will be included in the Senate’s version will come down to Wicker.
“We are trying to make sure that our strong advocates and voices in Mississippi are reaching out to the chairman and saying, ‘Hey, this has gotta get done.’ So, that plays into our sense of urgency that we’ve got to do this now,” McLeod said.
