How to Submit Your Beneficial Owner Information Report to Comply with the Corporate Transparency Act

Too-long-didn’t-read Summary of Article: Due to a new federal law, by the end of the 2024, you have to file a report for all your business entities to tell the government who its beneficial owners are. You can do so here: https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/fileboir

The Details

You may or may not have heard that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that it is in our country's best interest, in the ongoing fight against money laundering, to require all business owners, including the 99.99% of them who are not laundering money, to file a report with the government identifying the business and all "beneficial owners" of the business. This is all wrapped up in a package called the "Corporate Transparency Act."

Here's the gist: if you own a business, unless it is one of the enumerated exceptions (spoiler alert, if you're an LLC, you are most likely not exempt; some corporations are—you can check the resources below to be sure), you must submit a report. If your business was formed prior to January 1, 2024, you have until January 1, 2025 to get your report in. If you form it this year, you'll have 90 days after its formation, and for all businesses formed on or after January 1, 2025, the deadline will come within 30 days (unless things change, and they probably will).

I already filed the report for all my business entities. It takes about two minutes to file. Before you go file for yourselves, here's what you'll need with you:

  1. The official name of your business, its address, and its EIN

  2. Contact information for every beneficial owner of the business

  3. An uploadable photo ID for every beneficial owner of the business

It's pretty simple actually, even if the entire thing seems unnecessary (or at least overkill).

For most, beneficial owner(s) will just be the owner(s). But the definition is broad enough to include others who have control or even arguable influence over the business. I wouldn't include your office managers, but if you have any c-level employees and officers, I would include those, even if they have no ownership (which means collecting photo ids from each of them).

The penalty for filing late is steep (up to $500 per day late), so even though you've got until the end of the year to do this, don't put this off.

Here is the link to the form: https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/fileboir

Here is more info on the law: https://www.fincen.gov/boi-faqs

Here is a compliance guide: https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/BOI_Small_Compliance_Guide.v1.1-FINAL.pdf

Zachariah Parry