Abstract
The Truth in Lending Act of 1968 (TILA) was designed to protect consumers by implementing uniform disclosures for consumer financing transactions and by creating substantive consumer protections. While TILA has been amended over the past fifty years to reflect modern needs, it has always remained a consumer financing law. Over the past few years, however, states have challenged that notion by passing laws which require TILA-inspired disclosures for certain commercial-financing trans-actions. And at the federal level, a bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives (House Bill) that would expand TILA to commercial-financing transactions falling below a certain threshold. This Article contends that extending consumer-financing protections to small businesses will likely have unintended negative effects, and that although neither state nor federal expansion is advisable, of the two, a uniform fed-eral approach would be less harmful. After reviewing the commer-cial-financing disclosure requirements in the House Bill and in the three key states of California, New York, and North Carolina, the Article con-siders the effects on small businesses and consumers of an expansion of TILA and Regulation Z. The Article concludes by suggesting several revi-sions to ameliorate the negative impact of importing a consumer-financing disclosure regime into small-business commercial financing.
Recommended Citation
Kelly W. Cline, After All This Time: An Analysis of the Recent Trend to Extend Truth-in-Lending-Style Disclosures to Commercial-Financing Transactions, 45 Campbell L. Rev. 195 (2023).