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FinCEN publishes first guidance on beneficial ownership reporting requirements for businesses

By Mark Ford on March 27, 2023

The US treasury department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on Friday published its first set of guidance materials to aid the public, and in particular the small business community, in understanding upcoming beneficial ownership information reporting requirements taking effect on 1 January 2024.

Banks are amongst the 23 types of entities exempt from the reporting requirements that must be met by many corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities created in or registered to do business in the US to report information about their beneficial owners to FinCEN.

Reporting requirements

Reporting online direct to FinCEN, a company will have to declare its legal name, trade names, and any ‘doing business as’ or ‘trading as’ names.

A company must also provide a current street address of its principal place of business if that address is in the US, for example, a domestic reporting company’s headquarters). For reporting companies whose principal place of business is outside the US, the current address from which the company conducts business in the US must be given, for example, a foreign reporting company’s US headquarters.

A reporting company will also have to indicate jurisdiction of formation or registration and its taxpayer identification number.

Additional information

To assist understanding of the upcoming beneficial ownership reporting requirements, FinCEN has published a range of informational texts and videos.

These include answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the reporting requirement; one pagers on Key Filing Dates and Key Questions; an introductory video and a more detailed informational video.

Links to all of these informational materials can be found here.