One federal lawmaker from Iowa was able to get a bill out of the US House of Representatives.

Iowa’s Third Congressional District Representative Zach Nunn passed the “Protect Small Businesses and Prevent Illicit Financial Activity Act” overwhelmingly with 420 “yes” votes to one “no” vote. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio this bill aims to close a loophole for a foreign entity to establish a small business in the United States.

“If you’re an American company, you have to specifically state your name, your address, all the details of who you are. If you’re an overseas company there has been this loophole that basically you can highlight a ‘I don’t know clause’ or ‘I’m not filling this information in’ and we don’t have a domestically domicile entity that we can then hold accountable.”   

Nunn points out that the Chinese are the biggest player in this field with he believes having over 40,000 shell companies that are stealing intellectual property from other small businesses and laundering money under the auspices of a small business. He thinks this legislation would be make the playing field more fair.

“It’s unfair that there should have to be two small energy companies operating in a community. One has to adhere to the letter of the law or face the wrath of the federal government, the other one can effectively choose to say, ‘We’re an undisclosed entity operating overseas and I’ll float it to some foreign entity to be the enforcer.’” 

Now that the bill has passed the full House, it is now over in the Democratically-controlled Senate for consideration.