Bill > HR216

This bill amends four key securities laws (the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Company Act of 1940, and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940) to provide clearer guidelines for how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) determines and counts violations when imposing penalties. Specifically, the bill establishes that separate acts of noncompliance can be considered a single violation under three specific circumstances: when the acts stem from (1) a common or substantially overlapping originating cause, (2) the same misstatement or omission, or (3) a continuing failure to comply. This means that instead of potentially counting multiple technical violations separately, the SEC can assess penalties based on the fundamental nature and intent of the noncompliance. By standardizing this approach across different securities laws, the bill aims to create more consistent and potentially more proportionate enforcement practices, potentially reducing overly punitive penalty calculations that might arise from treating each technical violation as a distinct offense.

Business and Industry

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/216/all-info