Treasury Ends Beneficial Ownership Reporting Requirements

The long-running saga over the U.S. Treasury’s Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting requirements, created under the Corporate Transparency Act passed by Congress in 2021, is nearing its end. On Tuesday afternoon, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) released a final rule completing the action it began in March 2025 to suspend most of the rule and limit its application to covered entities that are foreign-owned and operating in the United States.

As originally written, the BOI rule would have forced all small businesses to meet burdensome reporting requirements by disclosing anyone who could be considered a “beneficial owner” of the company to the Treasury Department. The rule first took effect in January 2024 and required covered entities to submit disclosures by January 1, 2025. In December 2024, a federal judge paused the rule in a case for which NACS filed an amicus brief.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court lifted that injunction in February 2025, a separate injunction remained in place. In March 2025, Treasury announced it would not enforce penalties or fines for noncompliance before issuing an interim final rule that sharply narrowed the scope of the BOI requirements.

“This Treasury action is welcome news for tens of thousands of small business operators in convenience retail. NACS has consistently opposed this misguided rule, which would have burdened law-abiding small businesses while likely being ignored by the criminal actors it was intended to target. The interim final rule—and now this final rule—strikes the right balance,” said Jon Taets, director of government relations at NACS.

The final rule takes effect immediately upon publication in the Federal Register and directs the Treasury to dispose of any previously filed information about Americans. Many small businesses had already completed the time-consuming process of filing initial reports in 2024 before the courts halted the rule.

“Today’s action is a victory for common sense and American small businesses,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent in a news release from the Treasury. “... Treasury is eliminating a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.”

Compliance and regulations