Current Month (August 2026)
“Trust, But Don’t Verify”: Latest Rule on the CTA
By William E. H. Quick, Outside Inside Counsel, LLC
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) on August 14, 2026, issued a final rule (“Final Rule”) making permanent the interim final rule published on March 26, 2025, on the beneficial ownership information (“BOI”) reporting exemptions under the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”), while providing other relief for U.S. persons.
Under the Final Rule, U.S. domestic reporting companies are exempt from BOI reporting requirements and, therefore, are no longer required to file BOI reports. U.S. persons with an existing FinCEN ID are no longer required to update or correct their information on file with FinCEN. Further, for non-U.S. reporting companies, no reporting of BOI for U.S. person beneficial owners or applicants is required.
Going beyond the scope of the interim final rule, FinCEN in issuing the Final Rule acknowledged that the “values of privacy, information security, and the trust of the public all argue for the removal from the BO IT System, as much as practicable, of information that would not have been reported if the reporting requirements of this final rule had been in place starting on January 1, 2024.” 91 Fed. Reg. 52508, 52518 (Aug. 14, 2026).
FinCEN provided details regarding its plan to delete U.S. person information that is no longer required from the beneficial ownership IT system, with FinCEN relying on information contained in filed BOI reports and FinCEN IDs to identify all U.S. reporting companies, company applicants, and beneficial owners. To this end, FinCEN expressed no plan to require, request, or even allow U.S. companies or U.S. persons to contact FinCEN requesting that their BOI be removed. Further, FinCEN does not intend to provide any acknowledgement or confirmation that it has deleted any BOI, with FinCEN merely providing notice to the public (through FinCEN’s website) when the purge has been completed. In short, the U.S. public must “trust, but not verify” that their personal information is removed from FinCEN’s CTA database.
FinCEN stated that it intends a one-time sweep of its database to purge U.S. person data and will not make subsequent purges or deletions. “If BOI relating to a U.S. company or a U.S. person is included—inadvertently or intentionally—in a filing made after February 10, 2027, FinCEN does not anticipate deleting that information.” 91 Fed. Reg. 52508, 52518 (Aug. 14, 2026). This position is in spite of FinCEN’s own knowledge of continuing, mistaken reporting of U.S. person information into the beneficial ownership IT system that has occurred following the issuance of the interim final rule.
For U.S. persons, this Final Rule effectively marks the hibernation phase of the CTA, until a future administration acts to revive it, or Congress acts to repeal or revise it.
