ASA Advocacy Helps Deliver BOI Relief for Main Street Businesses

Working with the S-Corp Association and other partners, ASA continues pushing for a permanent fix to protect small businesses from unnecessary reporting burdens and privacy risks.

ASA and its coalition partners at the S-Corp Association scored an important win for Main Street businesses this summer when the Treasury Department finalized its revised beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting rule and committed to permanently deleting sensitive personal data already collected from millions of U.S. business owners.

Enacted by Congress in 2021 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) created new federal beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting requirements intended to help law enforcement combat money laundering and other illicit finance. The requirements took effect in 2024 and initially applied to tens of millions of U.S. businesses, requiring covered companies to report identifying information about their owners and controlling individuals to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). After years of legal challenges and advocacy from the small-business community, Treasury temporarily exempted U.S. companies and U.S. persons from the requirements in March 2025. On Aug. 11, 2026, FinCEN finalized that relief, permanently removing BOI reporting requirements for U.S. companies and U.S. persons and announcing that previously submitted information associated with U.S. persons will be deleted from the federal BOI database. The final rule became effective Aug. 14, 2026.

For ASA, the announcement represents the culmination of a five-year advocacy campaign to scale back the Corporate Transparency Act’s sweeping reporting requirements. ASA has worked individually and with other coalition partners to educate policymakers, highlight the burden on law-abiding small businesses, and press for relief from a rule that created significant compliance costs and privacy concerns without delivering meaningful law enforcement benefits.

The Treasury Department estimates the revised rule will generate $9 billion in annual compliance savings. While that figure is significant, it does not capture the time and money that Main Street employers have already spent trying to understand and comply with the unnecessary mandate.

A major component of the final rule is FinCEN’s decision to purge the existing BOI database. The agency announced it will delete BOI information previously collected from U.S. owners and entities - an action affecting an estimated 15 million entities and tens of millions of individuals. ASA and its partners have consistently argued that collecting this personal information from legitimate U.S. businesses exposed owners to unnecessary risk while doing little to stop illicit finance.

The coalition’s work helped keep this issue in front of federal officials and reinforced a clear message: small and family-owned businesses should not be treated like suspected bad actors simply because they have a corporate structure.  ASA amplified the concerns of its members and joined a broader Main Street effort to push back against overbroad federal reporting mandates.

“Treasury’s action is a significant win for Main Street businesses, but our work is not finished,” said ASA VP of Advocacy Steve Rossi. “While the final rule provides important relief by narrowing these reporting requirements, the underlying law remains in place and a future administration could revisit this approach. ASA will continue working with our coalition partners to pursue a permanent solution that protects small and family-owned businesses from unnecessary paperwork, compliance costs and privacy risks.”