Last night, President Trump and the Treasury Department each posted regarding the Corporate Transparency Act (which required Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting). I happened to see President Trump’s announcement first (on Truth Social), quoted by Carol Roth on Twitter:
From @realDonaldTrump @POTUS on Treasury’s big CTA BOI announcement… pic.twitter.com/RJACyZ8IDN
— Carol Roth (@caroljsroth) March 3, 2025
The Department of the Treasury release (a series of Twitter/X posts) states:
The Treasury Department is announcing today that, with respect to the Corporate Transparency Act, not only will it not enforce any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines…
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) March 2, 2025
The Treasury Department will further be issuing a proposed rulemaking that will narrow the scope of the rule to foreign reporting companies only.
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) March 2, 2025
“This is a victory for common sense,”said US Treasury @SecScottBessent “Today’s action is part of President Trump’s bold agenda to unleash American prosperity by reining in burdensome regulations, in particular for small businesses that are the backbone of the American economy.”
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) March 2, 2025
The one group of business owners who may still need to file BOI reports are entities with foreign owners. It’s unclear today if BOI reports will be required if there’s any foreign ownership or if an entity must be majority-foreign owned. If your entity falls into this category, you should pay attention to the new rules when announced.
But there is one minor fly in the ointment: Can the Department of the Treasury simply ignore the plain language of the law which requires reporting? That question immediately came to mind, and a fellow EA (Matt Metras) asked it in the comments to the Treasury tweets. It’s hard for me to envision Democrats challenging this: Let’s force small businesses to comply with a regulation that adds costs and we’ll make small business owners dislike us even more. (I also think that this will be formally done by a new regulation, or perhaps we should say “anti-regulation.”)
In any case, if you held off filing your BOI report it appears you’ve won: BOI reporting is dead for most.