Effective January 1, 2024, most small businesses in the US are bound by the Corporate Transparency Act. This new law seeks to gather extremely sensitive personally identifiable information on owners and officers of small businesses in the US. This will be done via an online portal run by Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which is part of the Department of Treasury. The actual link for the e-filing is
Because you are required to enter extremely sensitive information that would make for easy identity theft, I predict a number of scams that will trick people into thinking they are giving their Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) to FinCEN when they are actually giving it to scammers. As such, I highly recommend either entering the information yourself directly into the website listed above OR have your long term professional (such as CPA) do it for you. Do NOT give this information to someone you do not know or enter it in any website address other than https://www.fincen.gov/boi.
NOTE that the scams have apparently already started according to FinCEN:
Alert: FinCEN has been notified of recent fraudulent attempts to solicit information from individuals and entities who may be subject to reporting requirements under the Corporate Transparency Act. The fraudulent correspondence may be titled “Important Compliance Notice” and asks the recipient to click on a URL or to scan a QR code. Those e-mails or letters are fraudulent. FinCEN does not send unsolicited requests. Please do not respond to these fraudulent messages, or click on any links or scan any QR codes within them.
