Industry
FinCEN Permanently Ends BOI Reporting for US Companies and US Persons
A FinCEN final rule effective August 14, 2026 removes beneficial ownership reporting for US companies and US persons under the Corporate Transparency Act, and extends the exemption to company applicants. Only foreign reporting companies still file.
Published August 17, 20266 min readVerified as of August 17, 2026
What Happened
FinCEN published a final rule on August 14, 2026 that permanently removes beneficial ownership information reporting for US companies and US persons under the Corporate Transparency Act. The rule took effect the day it published and carries the citation 91 FR 52508 under RIN 1506-AB67. The practical result is that a domestic LLC or corporation formed in any state no longer files a beneficial ownership information report, and no US person has to hand identifying documents to a company for that purpose.
What the Final Rule Changes
The rule finalizes, with limited changes, an interim final rule FinCEN issued on March 26, 2025. FinCEN's summary states that the rule "not only continues to exempt reporting companies from having to report the BOI of U.S. person beneficial owners and U.S. person beneficial owners from having to provide BOI to reporting companies; it also exempts reporting companies from having to submit information about their U.S. person company applicants to FinCEN and exempts U.S. person company applicants from any obligation to provide their information." A separate piece releases every US person from having to update information already given to FinCEN in connection with obtaining a FinCEN identifier.
- Reporting companies no longer report beneficial ownership information for any beneficial owner who is a US person
- US person beneficial owners no longer provide their information to a reporting company
- US person company applicants are exempt, and reporting companies do not submit information about them
- US persons holding a FinCEN identifier no longer have to keep the underlying information current
Who Still Has to File
The reporting obligation now reaches only the entities the original regulations called foreign reporting companies, meaning entities formed under the law of a foreign country that have registered to do business in a US state or tribal jurisdiction. Those entities still file, and they still report beneficial owners and company applicants who are not US persons. A foreign reporting company whose beneficial owners are all US persons reports none of them.
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The Part Most Coverage Skips
Headlines describing this as the end of BOI reporting are accurate about where things landed and misleading about when. US companies stopped filing in March 2025, when FinCEN issued the interim final rule that first narrowed the definition of a reporting company. What August 14 adds is permanence, plus two extensions the interim rule did not cover: the company applicant exemption and the FinCEN identifier update relief. Anyone who tracked this as a live compliance deadline through 2025 and 2026 was tracking a deadline that had already gone away.
What Happens to Data Already Filed
FinCEN said it expects to rely on previously filed reports to identify domestic reporting companies, and that it will work with the National Archives and Records Administration to delete information about individuals in its beneficial ownership IT system where it reasonably believes a US person supplied the identifying document. Two limits are worth knowing. FinCEN does not intend to provide any acknowledgment or confirmation that a particular record was removed, and the deletion is a one-time exercise, so material submitted after February 10, 2027 falls outside it.
What This Means for Accountants
The Corporate Transparency Act is a much smaller topic for practitioners than it was two years ago. Firms that built beneficial ownership filing services when the reporting regime started have watched the domestic market for that work disappear. The compliance question that remains is narrow: identifying which clients are foreign entities registered to do business in a US state, and whether any of their beneficial owners or company applicants are non-US persons. This is practitioner knowledge rather than exam material. Our REG exam guide covers what the Business Law area of the exam tests.
Sources
- 1.Federal Register — Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirement Revision, Final Rule (91 FR 52508, RIN 1506-AB67)(accessed Aug 17, 2026)
- 2.Federal Register — Full Text of the Final Rule (2026-16576)(accessed Aug 17, 2026)
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Brennan Kolar
Founder, Atlas CPA Index
Brennan Kolar is the founder of Atlas CPA Index, an independent CPA review comparison platform covering all 55 U.S. jurisdictions. With over 10 years of experience with CPA review, he built Atlas to help candidates find the right review course based on how they actually learn, not which provider has the biggest ad budget.
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