The ACCESS Act of 2025 raises the offering threshold requiring a public accountant review from $\$100,000$ to $\$250,000$, with potential SEC increases up to $\$400,000$, to ease burdens on small business capital formation.
Daniel Meuser
Representative
PA-9
The ACCESS Act of 2025 aims to support small businesses by significantly raising the offering threshold that requires a review by a public accountant, increasing it from $\$100,000$ to $\$250,000$. This new threshold may be further increased by the SEC up to $\$400,000$ based on recommendations from key advocacy offices. The bill also includes technical updates to correct outdated cross-references within the Securities Act of 1933.
ACCESS Act Raises Crowdfunding Review Threshold to $250,000, Easing Burden on Small Business Capital Raises
The ACCESS Act of 2025 is tackling the bureaucratic hurdles faced by small businesses trying to raise capital through crowdfunding. Essentially, the bill takes a significant step to reduce the compliance costs for smaller offerings by changing a key requirement in the Securities Act of 1933. Specifically, it raises the dollar amount that triggers a mandatory financial review by an independent public accountant from $100,000 up to $250,000.
The New Compliance Shortcut
Think of this mandatory review as a financial safety check. Before this bill, if a startup wanted to raise $150,000 from the public, they had to pay for a CPA firm to review their financials—a process that costs time and money. The ACCESS Act moves that required checkpoint to $250,000 (Sec. 2). For a small business launching a crowdfunding campaign, this means those raising between $100,000 and $250,000 can now skip that specific administrative step, saving them thousands in accounting fees and speeding up their capital raise. This is a clear win for bootstrapped entrepreneurs who need every dollar to go toward operations, not compliance.
The SEC Gets a Dial to Turn
Beyond the immediate bump to $250,000, the bill grants the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the authority to raise this threshold even higher, up to $400,000 (Sec. 2). This isn't a unilateral decision, though; the SEC can only do this if both the Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation and the Office of the Investor Advocate recommend it. This flexibility is designed to allow the SEC to adjust the rules as the market changes, theoretically keeping pace with inflation and the rising cost of doing business. It’s a mechanism that aims for agility but also concentrates more power in the hands of regulators.
Where Investor Protection Gets Tricky
While the bill is great news for small businesses, it introduces a trade-off for investors. That mandatory public accountant review was a layer of safety—a professional third party checking the books before you put your money in. By raising the threshold, the ACCESS Act removes this mandatory check for offerings between $100,000 and $250,000. For an investor looking at a $200,000 funding round, they are now relying more heavily on the company's own internal reporting rather than a mandatory independent scrub. This means investors need to be even more diligent in their own research, as the federal government is stepping back from mandating a specific level of financial scrutiny for these smaller deals. It’s a classic balancing act: reducing the burden on those raising capital versus increasing the risk for those providing it.