Corporate Transparency Act: All Associations Must File Report with FinCEN by 12/31/24!

The Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”) is here to stay, and for now, condominiums, townhomes, homeowners and community associations must file the required Beneficial Ownership Information Report (BOIR) by December 31, 2024. Failure to comply will result in penalties imposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The primary goal of the CTA is to increase business transparency and accountability, thereby preventing illegal activities such as fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.

Like the Illinois Secretary of State’s annual report (for which all board members’ names and addresses are disclosed on the annual report), the BOIR requires board members to disclose certain personal information to FinCEN. The good news is that board members who feared that their personal information could be comprised if they needed to share it with other board members (or their attorney!), now have an opportunity to create an individual account with FinCEN and receive a FinCEN identification number (“FinCEN ID”) which is the only information that the board member would need to share with us for their portion of the BOIR report. Additional information (including step-by-step instructions!) regarding creating a login.gov account and establishing a FinCEN ID can be found at https://fincenid.fincen.gov/landing.

What does this mean for your association? The Board has two options—decide whether it wishes to undertake filing the BOIR on its own (additional information (including step-by-step instructions!) can be found at: https://www.fincen.gov/boi). In the alternative, Tressler can undertake the filing of the BOIR but same will require individual board members to provide either their personal information or FinCEN ID to our office. If you wish for Tressler to assist you with CTA compliance, please reach out to one of our HOA Law attorneys at CTAcompliance@tresslerllp.com to discuss the next steps.

For more information about this article, contact Katerina Tsoukalas-Heitkemper at kheitkemper@tresslerllp.com.