FINCEN REPORTS ON STATUS OF CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY ACT

The Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”) became effective January 1, 2024. The CTA is intended to address and guard against money laundering and other forms of illegal financing by requiring certain entities (primarily small and medium size businesses) to report “beneficial owner” information to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”). The CTA authorizes FinCEN, a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department, to collect, protect, and disclose this information to authorized governmental authorities and to financial institutions in certain circumstances.  

Recently, FinCEN held a webinar to report on the status of implementation of the CTA. FinCen reported that, to date, more than 1,000,000 beneficial owner reports have been filed with FinCen’s federal database. FinCen reiterated in their comments that their enforcement efforts are not intended as a “gotcha” to businesses attempting to comply with the new law. FinCen confirmed that they are not looking to penalize those attempting compliance with the filing requirements in good faith. Rather, their enforcement efforts will be focused on those refusing to comply with the requirements of the CTA. 

FinCen also shared the variety of ways that businesses can ask questions about the CTA. FinCen provides an automated chat bot as well as contact information on their website for their service center for questions that can’t be answered through information on the website. 

A link to FinCen’s webinar is located here. We intend to follow this post up with additional compliance information as it becomes available. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the CTA, please feel free to reach out to us.