Congress quietly raises the bar for reporting financial crimes
H.R. 1799 — Financial Reporting Threshold Modernization Act · Filed by Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) · 20 cosponsors · Introduced Mar 3, 2025 · Reported out
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What it does
This bill raises the dollar thresholds that trigger mandatory financial reporting to the government. Banks must now report currency transactions of $30,000 or more (up from $10,000), suspicious activity of $10,000 or more (up from $5,000), and money services businesses must report transactions of $3,000 or more (up from $1,000). The thresholds will automatically adjust every 5 years for inflation. The bill also requires the Treasury Department to review whether these reporting forms are effective at catching money laundering and illicit finance.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is to raise the dollar thresholds at which banks and financial institutions must report transactions to federal authorities. This reduces regulatory burden on financial institutions by allowing larger transactions to proceed without triggering mandatory reporting, effectively deregulating financial crime detection.
What the text implies
- Raising thresholds from $10,000 to $30,000 for currency transaction reports may enable structuring (breaking large transactions into smaller ones to avoid reporting) to occur at higher volumes before triggering suspicion.
- The automatic inflation adjustment mechanism means thresholds will drift higher over time without explicit congressional action, making future deregulation less visible and requiring affirmative legislative effort to restore lower thresholds.
The full analysis lists 4 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
commercial banks; credit unions; money services businesses