A sweeping new law aimed at protecting the privacy of people living in the European Union will likely force virtually all businesses – small and large – here in the United States to overhaul the way they collect and use personal information received and stored digitally, or face potentially huge fines.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has announced an immediate stay and review of an Obama-era policy requiring pay information to be included on form EEO-1. The revised form was set to take effect with the next filing cycle in March 2018.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has always required companies to report data on the race and gender of their employees, but this impending new rule expanded that requirement to provide wage and hour data for the employer’s entire workforce, divided into 12 separate pay bands designated by the EEOC. The policy was applicable to private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees. By collecting data to identify patterns of pay discrimination across industries and occupations, the Obama administration had hoped the policy would help close the wage gap and ensure equal pay among all groups of people.