Department of the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touted the corporate transparency that will come with the new beneficial ownership reporting requirements, which went into effect at the start of 2024.

““The benefits of increasing corporate transparency through gathering beneficial ownership information – put simply, knowing who owns what – start with with protecting our national security,”” she said January 8, 2024, at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network office in Vienna, Va. “Information on beneficial ownership will support our law enforcement colleagues in making arrests, prosecuting offenders, and seizing ill-gotten assets.”

She added that it will also “inform strategic, targeted actions, such as sanctions. Corporate transparency can bring economic benefits as well: protecting our financial system, reducing due diligence costs, enabling fair business competition, and increasing tax revenue.”

More than 100,000 filings of BOI reports have been made in the first week of the reporting requirement, Sec. Yellen said.

She also emphasized that the systems that support the filing of the reports “have been designed with data security as a core priority. Companies will use a filing system through FinCEN’s website and FinCEN will store the information it received in a non-public database with rigorous controls.”

Yellen also noted that that the process to file a BOI report is simple and small businesses should not need to hire any outside help to report the required information.

“A small business shouldn’t need a certified public accountant or lawyer” to file, she said.

By Gregory Twachtman, Washington News Editor