FinCEN ends beneficial ownership reporting for US entities

The US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a final rule on 11 August 2026 that permanently removes the obligation for US companies and US persons to report beneficial ownership information under the Corporate Transparency Act. The rule takes effect on publication in the Federal Register, which followed on 14 August.

FinCEN also confirmed it will delete information already held on individuals it reasonably identifies as US persons, using markers such as a US passport or driving licence. The deletion covers beneficial owners, company applicants and holders of a FinCEN identifier.

For families with US holding structures, this closes a file that has been open, then shut, then reopened, since the start of 2024.

What the rule changes

The Corporate Transparency Act was enacted on 1 January 2021 as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, and the implementing rule FinCEN adopted in 2022 estimated that roughly 32.6 million entities fell within scope. Litigation brought by small businesses produced nationwide injunctions in late 2024 and early 2025. Treasury then suspended enforcement against domestic companies in March 2025 and published an interim final rule later that month exempting them pending a permanent decision.

The August rule adopts those exemptions and goes further, according to an analysis published by Sidley Austin. Entities created in the United States are permanently exempt. Foreign reporting companies no longer identify US person company applicants, an obligation the interim rule had left standing. US persons holding a FinCEN identifier need not update it. Foreign pooled investment vehicles registered in the United States no longer report US persons exercising substantial control, and where no controlling individual is a non-US person, they report no beneficial owners at all.

“Treasury is eliminating a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the announcement.

Only entities formed under foreign law and registered to do business in a US state or tribal jurisdiction now qualify as reporting companies, and only for their non-US beneficial owners. FinCEN puts that population at around 28,000, of which some 13,000 had filed by the end of 2025.

What it does not change

Banks still have to ask. The 2016 Customer Due Diligence Rule requires covered financial institutions to identify and verify the beneficial owners of legal entity customers at account opening, and it is untouched by the new rule. With the federal register emptied of domestic filings, that rule becomes the main route by which domestic ownership data reaches the financial system and law enforcement. FinCEN has said it intends to revisit the CDD Rule but has given no timetable and no indication of direction.

Families and their advisers should therefore expect the same questions at onboarding, from the same institutions, with the same documentary burden. What has gone is a filing obligation, not the underlying enquiry.

The wider transparency picture remains unsettled. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development recently rated the United States “Largely Compliant” on beneficial ownership transparency, as Family Wealth Report noted. In the European Union, public access to ownership registers was struck down by the Court of Justice in November 2022 on privacy grounds, and access has since been limited to those able to demonstrate a legitimate interest, a test whose boundaries are still argued over.

Two large jurisdictions have now moved away from open ownership registers, by different routes and for different stated reasons. Families with structures spanning both should assume the divergence, rather than the direction, is the durable fact.

Sources: FinCEN, Sidley Austin, Family Wealth Report.