Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, or JOBS Act, is a law intended to encourage funding of small businesses in the United States by easing many of the country's securities regulations. It passed with bipartisan support, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on April 5, 2012. Title III, also known as the CROWDFUND Act, has drawn the most public attention because it creates a way for companies to use crowdfunding to issue securities, something that was not previously permitted. Title II went into effect on September 23, 2013. On October 30, 2015, the SEC adopted final rules allowing Title III equity crowdfunding. These rules went into effect on May 16, 2016. Other titles of the Act had previously become effective in the years since the Act’s passage.

Following the decrease in small business activity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, congress considered a number of solutions to help spur economic growth. In November 2011, the House passed several bills aimed at economic revitalization, including Small Company Capital Formation (H.R. 1070), Entrepreneur Access to Capital (H.R. 2930), and Access to Capital for Job Creators (H.R. 2940). The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act was introduced by Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and revised in collaboration with Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). Informed by the Crowdfunding exemption movement and endorsed by the White House, it was the first U.S. bill designed to create a regulatory exemption for crowdfunded securities.

The passage of H.R. 2930 inspired the introduction of two Senate bills similarly focused on the new crowdfunding exemption: the Democratizing Access to Capital Act (S.1791, Scott Brown, R-MA), and the CROWDFUND (Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure) Act (S.1970, Jeff Merkley, D-OR). All three crowdfunding proposals were referred to the Senate Banking Committee, which took no action on them until March 2012.

In December 2011, Rep. Stephen Lee Fincher (R-TN) introduced into the House the Reopening American Capital Markets to Emerging Growth Companies Act (H.R. 3606), to relieve companies with annual revenue of less than $1 billion from some Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance requirements. The bill was referred to the House Financial Services Committee.

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