What the final rule actually does

The final rule adopts the March 2025 interim rule “as final and with certain limited changes,” and adds a new provision at 31 CFR 1010.380(b)(5) titled Special exemptions:

Subparagraph (i): “Reporting companies are exempt from any requirement under 31 U.S.C. 5336 and this section to report the beneficial ownership information of any United States persons who are beneficial owners or company applicants.”

Subparagraph (ii): “United States persons are exempt from any requirement under 31 U.S.C. 5336 and this section to provide beneficial ownership information with respect to any reporting company for which they are beneficial owners or company applicants.”

It also revises § 1010.380(b)(4)(iii)(A) so that only an individual holding a FinCEN identifier who is not a United States person must update or correct it, and it removes § 1010.380(d)(4). The rule is signed by Andrea M. Gacki, Director of FinCEN, and carries RIN 1506-AB67.

Layered together, the two rules leave “reporting company” reaching only entities formed under foreign law and registered to do business in a U.S. state or tribal jurisdiction — and even those need not report the information of U.S. person beneficial owners.

What it means for an Arkansas association

Nothing to file, and nothing to keep filing. The original scheme was not a one-off. It required updates within 30 days of a change in beneficial ownership, which for an association meant a filing every time the board turned over. For a self-managed Arkansas POA with an annual election, that was a recurring compliance task assigned to a volunteer. It is gone.

Stop collecting director identity documents for this purpose. Associations and management companies that gathered dates of birth, residential addresses and images of driver's licences or passports to satisfy the CTA no longer have a federal reason to hold them. That material is exactly the kind of personal data an association is least equipped to secure, and retaining it now serves no compliance purpose. Whether and how to dispose of it is a records-retention decision that sits alongside the association's other records obligations.

Previously filed information is being deleted. FinCEN has said it will remove information already submitted by U.S. persons from the BOI database, and U.S. persons holding a FinCEN identifier need not update it.

Penalty exposure is closed. The civil and criminal penalties that drove the 2024 anxiety among volunteer boards no longer attach, because there is no longer an obligation to breach.

What has not changed

This is a federal rule about a federal database, and it touches nothing in Arkansas law. In particular:

The Arkansas annual report is still due every August 1. Every Arkansas nonprofit corporation — which is what almost every Arkansas HOA and POA is — must file an annual report with the Secretary of State naming its registered agent at a physical Arkansas address, its principal office, its officers and a board of at least three directors. There is no fee. Miss it and the association faces administrative dissolution under Ark. Code Ann. §§ 4-33-1420 to -1424, with a cure period and a two-year reinstatement window. That is the filing an Arkansas board actually has to worry about, and it always was.

The association's own records duties are untouched, as are its obligations to members under its declaration and bylaws.

What to watch next

The CTA itself is still on the books — what changed is the regulation implementing it, made under the Secretary's exemptive authority rather than by repeal. A future administration could revisit the exemption by the same route, and the Government Accountability Office has already questioned the gaps created by the expanded exemptions. For now, though, an Arkansas association's beneficial-ownership obligation is not merely suspended or enjoined. It is exempted by final rule.