Avoiding $500 per day penalties and 2 years imprisonment, Part II

This is an update to our post from late last year: How to avoid $500 per day penalties and 2 years imprisonment.

The Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network (FinCEN), as promised, has opened up their online portal to allow companies and their beneficial owners to file Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reports as required by the Corporate Transparency Act.  To create a FinCEN ID and/or file a report using their portal, you can use this link.

There is no fee to file the report through the online portal.  For companies that formed prior to 2024, the due date for filing the form is January 1, 2025.  Companies that are formed in 2024 have to file their initial report within 90 days from the date of receiving actual or public notice of the formation of the company.  For companies formed in 2025 and beyond, that is shortened to just 30 days.

While a company’s BOI report is intended to be a one-time requirement, the report does needs to be updated within 30 days whenever the information on the report changes.  Unfortunately, the information is guaranteed to change since several pieces of the required information have expiration dates.  Here is a non-exhaustive list of changes in information that could necessitate an updated report:

• Company changes:
  • Name change
  • Address change
  • New owners
  • Change in ownership interests
  • Management change
• Beneficial owner changes:
  • Name change
  • Address change
  • FinCEN identifier change
  • New driver’s license, passport, or other identifying document used to submit initial or previously updated report

If you use the web-based application to submit the original report through FinCEN’s online portal, then the updated report will require that you re-enter all the unchanged data in addition to the changed information.  If you submit the fillable PDF version, then you can update only the information that changed on your saved copy of the PDF and resubmit it.

If you prefer not to deal directly with FinCEN, then you can use a paid third-party reporting service like FileForms.com, which will not require you to complete the entire report each time you have an update.