FINCEN A New Business Filing Requested By The Dept Of Treasury To Bring Financial Transparency On All Business Ownerships
- Admin
- Dec 15, 2024
- 3 min read
by C Leonard, MBA, CHC
What is FINCEN? It is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network driven by the US Treasury.
So, we have recently learned and kept an eye out regarding this "new" requirement that went into effect January 1, 2024 for all Business entities that are registered with their respective Secretary of States (corporate). All small or large businesses who file for their Corporation Annual Reports "yearly" are recommended to complete. It is called the BOI - Business Ownership Information Form. So why now must we file yet another report?
Upon our review and research we find this is designed to bring in more ownership transparency to the government with more focus to eliminate nefarious activities such as money laundering, embezzlement, etc. by shell companies; or domestic/foreign businesses not identifying "all" ownership connections (i.e. such as Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado based entities) we can only hope! Suffice to say, I get it since there has been so much corruption for years in the huge corporate industry, especially big pharma (one of the largest financial gain with too much control in health industry), one would be very naive to think otherwise. I see this as a two fold mechanism. Minimize corruption and embezzlement, laundering of people's monies, and bring transparency to all from these companies hidden in plain sight. Or is it for other reasons? We do not know the answer to that, yet can only hope it is for the good. Many owners understandably do not want their personal information 'public' due to protection from liability or harassment by vultures. In this same respect, I would expect the government to show accountability as well to the people of this nation as all deserve it!
So how does this affect you? If you are a corporation, S corp, C corp, LLC you are expected to file this form. We have tried to download a form, but it does not work from their website, maybe intentional or not. It does not download even if you have the most up to date PDF program! So the other option is to file it directly on the FINCEN website of which we will include a link below to connect you.
There was to be a deadline by January 1, 2025, but in our recent review, it states there is an ongoing litigation and the deadline (or else you could receive $500+fines for not filing) has been removed. At this point filing this for your business is "voluntary". There is a reason they are doing this and I believe it is due to the aforementioned. Therefore, it would be a good idea to provide the validation for your business to have no issues as the lawsuit may finalize and you don't want to be in a bad spot last minute. If we have nothing to hide, this should be simple, yet it brings to mind a question; What is the purpose of filing our corporate annual report especially if a small business with our States? They have all our information included in their databases why not extract that from the State level, have the people WE pay do the work.
There are a few businesses who are considered "exempt" from this listed within the link provided, in short - Large entities like banks, insurance companies , non profits for example are not required to as they already must have "full" disclosures of all ownerships before obtaining their licensure statuses. A inactive entity would qualify as well.
We hope this assists you in preparation and provides you the method to do your research. Onward to an unveiling future.
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