BOI reporting and unauthorized disclosure penalties increased

Inflation adjustments have significantly increased the civil monetary penalties for violating the beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting rules and for the unauthorized disclosure or use of BOI. The rules requiring the reporting of BOI just went into effect this month.

The penalties are included for the first time in the annual final rule issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that provides the list of inflation adjustments of civil monetary penalties within FinCEN's jurisdiction. The increases, which were posted in the Federal Register, are required under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, P.L. 101-410, as amended.

The penalties for BOI reporting violations and for the unauthorized disclosure or use of BOI are each increased to $591 a day from $500, effective Jan. 25.

The penalties were established in 2021 when the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which mandates BOI reporting, became law in 2021. But FinCEN's regulations for the CTA were not yet effective, so the penalties were not published previously, FinCEN said in the Federal Register.

As of Jan. 1, most companies created in or registered to do business in the United States must report information about their beneficial owners to FinCEN as part of an anti-money laundering initiative. FinCEN estimates about 32.6 million BOI reports will be filed in 2024, with about 5 million initial reports filed annually after that.

To calculate the adjustments for BOI penalties in the list, the adjustment multipliers from 2022, 2023, and 2024 were applied to the civil monetary penalties established by the CTA.

The final rule also increases penalties for 10 other violations, including willful or grossly negligent recordkeeping and willful violations of Bank Secrecy Act requirements.

By Martha Waggoner