Treasury Orders Erasure of Domestic Ownership Records

I think the genesis was the Panama papers release way back. Turns out the US is one of the better places to launder money through.

I don’t understand though: Why would any company find it difficult to register their owners? That seems like a pretty basic thing any company should know and it’s a perfectly normal thing in most countries.

Supposedly, but there was scant information about the what/why and small businesses were told compliance was mandatory and failure to comply would have been a felony (if memory serves). This is phenomenal news if you're an SMB. That would have caused a lot of grief for those unaware (most people were because rollout was slipshod at best).