On Facebook today, the City of Middletown announced the following update to water utility billing, illustrating the need to focus on current Ohio water utility legislation:

Important Water and Sewer Update! 📣

The City of Middletown Water and Sewer Rules and Regulations are in the process of being updated. The updated rules and regulations will go into effect April 1st, 2025. Some key changes to take note of are:

• All water accounts will remain in the property owner's name. Tenants will no longer be able to sign up for a water account. Any account that is currently in a tenant’s name will remain active until the account is closed.
• The service fee will be increasing to $50.00.
• Deposits will be increasing to $300.00.

A copy of the Water and Sewer Rules and Regulations can be found on the city website at cityofmiddletown.org/254/water-services.

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT REGARDING CTA:

March 2, 2025

The Treasury Department is announcing today that, with respect to the Corporate Transparency Act, not only will it not enforce any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines, but it will further not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after the forthcoming rule changes take effect either. The Treasury Department will further be issuing a proposed rulemaking that will narrow the scope of the rule to foreign reporting companies only. Treasury takes this step in the interest of supporting hard-working American taxpayers and small businesses and ensuring that the rule is appropriately tailored to advance the public interest.

“This is a victory for common sense,” said U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.  “Today’s action is part of President Trump’s bold agenda to unleash American prosperity by reining in burdensome regulations, in particular for small businesses that are the backbone of the American economy.”

Received this email today from an attorney friend and mentor - Lee R Phillips regarding FinCEN and BOI reporting which is back on, again, just in case you missed the latest news on this. Crazy how this keeps going back and forth

So registration is back on. Isn’t this fun! I did a YouTube on all this last week tracking what happened in January, but this new information Trumps (no pun intended) that YouTube. It’s still a good watch if you are having trouble falling asleep Check it out at https://youtu.be/oO4_2sZ0tkc

 We sent out word that the Corporate Transparency Act was again on hold, and what do you know? The news has changed again!  Who's paying for all this whiplash?

HERE'S THE MOST RECENT NEWS:   

Justices allow enforcement of corporate transparency law to go forward - SCOTUSblog

⊕  If you value your privacy (and before voluntarily filing your information), we highly recommend you check out this link with more information on the CTA, why you should be concerned, the likely outcomes, and a video announcement from attorney Jeff Watson:  https://marei.org/corporate-transparency-act-unconstitutional/

Should you file now or wait a bit longer? That is up to you and your advisors, but you can't unfile should the rulings change yet again. Check to see what information you might need and be ready. If you have all the required info, it only takes a few minutes per entity to file.

Link to File: https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/fileboir

In case you're still unclear how exactly the CTA affects independent investors, under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), independent real estate investors are required to report Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).