Guide 09 · The rule as it stands, dated

Beneficial ownership (BOI) and the Corporate Transparency Act: do you have to file?

Short answer, as of November 2026: if your company was formed in the United States, no — US-formed companies are currently exempt from beneficial-ownership reporting to FinCEN. If you are registering a company formed in another country to do business in the US, yes — that filing still exists. This guide states the rule, the date it took its current shape, and the one related demand that did not go away: your bank will still ask who owns the company.

What BOI reporting was

The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) required most US LLCs, corporations, and similar entities to report their beneficial owners — the individuals who own or control them — to FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the US Treasury. The registry is not public; it exists for law-enforcement and financial-institution use. For two years this was the most-searched compliance question in US formation, and most of what still ranks for it online describes the old rule.

The rule now

The distinction that decides it is where the company was formed, not where its owners live. A Delaware LLC owned entirely from Lagos, London, or Lahore is a US-formed company and is exempt. A Nigerian or UK company that registers to do business in Texas is a foreign reporting company and reports. Founders who formed a US company and filed a BOI report under the old rule do not need to do anything further under the current one.

What did not change: banks still ask

FinCEN’s exemption is about reporting to FinCEN. It does not touch the separate Customer Due Diligence (CDD) rule, under which US banks and financial institutions must identify and verify the beneficial owners of their business customers when accounts are opened. Expect any US bank or fintech onboarding a foreign-owned LLC to ask for ownership information and identity documents for the owners — that is the CDD rule working as designed, not the CTA, and the exemption is not a reason to be surprised by it or a basis to refuse it.

State lookalikes

A small number of states have enacted their own transparency registers modelled on the CTA, New York’s LLC Transparency Act being the best known. Those are state obligations with their own scopes and start dates, separate from the federal rule above; if your company is formed or registered in a state with one, check its current requirements or ask a preparer in that state.

What Sethhost does — and does not do

There is no BOI filing to sell a US-formed company under the current rule, so Sethhost does not sell one. The topic stays on our radar the way every tracked obligation does: rules change; we track this on the calendar, and if the rule changes for companies we host, the change lands on your compliance calendar with the deadline attached. If you are registering a foreign-formed company in the US, the BOI report is part of that project and belongs with the adviser handling the registration. Sources: FinCEN, Beneficial Ownership Information reporting pages and the March 2025 interim final rule and August 2026 final rule (fincen.gov). This page states the position as of November 2026.