The summary version of this blog post is the following: if you have not yet reported your Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI), I highly encourage you to do so ASAP. But in order to understand how we got here, please read on…
When I published my last blog post in January 2024 (yes I took almost a year off from posting!), the new reporting requirement was fresh and new and we had a whole year to report our business ownership information. If you still haven’t heard of this and don’t know what it is, please see my January 2024 Blog post. There are some hefty fines that will supposedly be levied if you do not comply with the requirements.
Unauthorized Practice of Law?
As we made our way through this year, the BOI conversation got muddy. Here in CPA-land, attorneys and CPA’s were arguing about whether or not we could help our clients report their BOI. Some were worried that it could be “unauthorized practice of law” as it has more to do with legal business entity registration and less to do with a CPA and your taxes. Some were concerned that if we get sued for helping our clients comply with this new requirement, our liability insurance would not cover us.
Is BOI even legal?
Then the court challenges started to come. People started arguing that BOI is unconstitutional and thus should not be mandated to report this information to the government. People were concerned about their identities and personal information, and who was going to have access to that information.
Do businesses even know about BOI?
Meanwhile, the AICPA and other organizations started growing concerned because FinCEN who is leading the charge on the new BOI reporting had not been doing a good job of getting the word out there about the new requirement. Many small businesses didn’t know that BOI was even a thing, or if they had heard about it, they thought it might be a scam. The AICPA started lobbying for an extension to the BOI deadline which was set for January 1, 2025 in order to give more time to spread awareness.
Do I need to pay someone to file BOI?
Also, predatory for-profit companies started taking advantage of the situation and started sending out emails and letters with scare tactics to get unsuspecting business owners to pay them several hundred dollars to “help” them file their BOI. While it isn’t illegal for those companies to provide that service, it’s certainly predatory and unnecessary. The process is very simple to file directly on the FinCEN website for free.
Florida hurricane disasters delay BOI
Then in the fall of this year, if you are located in Florida, you became part of a Federal disaster declaration due to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. That means that your BOI reporting deadline was extended from January 1, 2025 to July 1, 2025.
BOI is blocked
On December 3rd, 2024 a Federal District Court found the Corporate Transparency Act and its BOI regulation likely unconstitutional and prohibited FinCEN from enforcing the BOI requirements. That meant that the January 1, 2025 deadline (or July 1, 2025 for Florida) was off the table…. temporarily. However, the AICPA and other organizations continued to encourage businesses to report their BOI voluntarily because at any time, the courts could rule differently, and the deadlines would be back on. Others offered up a resolution to the courts to extend the deadline for reporting by a year.
BOI is back on
Fast forward to today, December 23rd, 2024 – about 8 days before the normal BOI deadline (remember that Florida still has until July 1, 2025 so don’t panic), the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the district court preliminary injunction against BOI reporting. In addition, last week, Congress failed to pass the continuing resolution that included the extension to January 1, 2026.
In layman’s terms, that means the January 1, 2025 deadline is back on (and July 1, 2025 for Florida).
What do I do now?
As the courts continue to fight this out and this exhausting saga changes by the day, as a business owner and CPA, my recommendation is to go ahead and file. For most businesses it takes about 15 minutes, it costs nothing, and it’s a peace of mind knowing you have complied with the requirements, and you can get on with running your business without risk of facing fines and penalties. File your BOI directly on the FinCEN website.
