If you read my last blog post you know that last month the U.S. Treasury Department stated that it would not enforce the Beneficial Ownership Reporting (“BOI”) requirement on domestic companies, which would include all of our Washington and Oregon clients. At the end of March, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) issued an interim final rule essentially stating that BOI Reporting Requirement will only apply to foreign reporting companies. A rule that exempts all of our Washington and Oregon clients.
An interim final rule is a regulatory decision that’s effective immediatly but reverse of the standard process of publishing a proposed rule for comment before issuing a final rule. Here, FinCen has established a binding rule, and then opened it up for a comment period, while reserving the ability to modify the rule based on the public comments. This means that this rule could still change, although I would not expect and revisions to require associations to file BOI reports.
This may seem like an insignificant change from my last post, but as a distinction while this is consistent with the U.S. Treasury Department’s official statement, that did nothing to the requirement of filing, it just said that it would not enforce penalties. FinCEN’s new rule will exempt associations from the requirement to file, a subtle but very significant distinction. This rule will give Associations the confidence to stop frequently monitoring the ever-evolving requirements- at least after the comment period expires on May 27, 2025 and we can review the changes to the rule.
For additional information, on how this requirement has progressed and what it intended to do, please read our prior blog articles on the topic, here, here, here, and here.
