If anyone is still billing your New York board for beneficial ownership filings, stop paying
If anyone is still billing your New York board for beneficial ownership filings, stop paying
2026-09-15 · New York · Regulation
For two years New York condominium boards, cooperative corporations and homeowners associations were told their directors would have to file personal identifying information with the federal government. That obligation is now permanently and finally gone — and FinCEN's own final rule discusses homeowners associations by name.
The instrument is FinCEN's final rule “Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirement Revision,” 31 CFR Part 1010, RIN 1506-AB67, published August 14, 2026 and effective the same day, at 91 Fed. Reg. 52508. It finalizes the interim final rule published at 90 FR 13688 on March 26, 2025.1
What the rule does
From the summary:
“FinCEN is issuing this final rule to adopt as final and with certain limited changes the interim final rule issued on March 26, 2025, which narrowed beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting requirements under FinCEN's regulations implementing the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). In particular, this final rule not only continues to exempt reporting companies from having to report the BOI of U.S. person beneficial owners and U.S. person beneficial owners from having to provide BOI to reporting companies; it also exempts reporting companies from having to submit information about their U.S. person company applicants to FinCEN…”
On permanence: “FinCEN is now issuing a final rule to modify the BOI Reporting Rule permanently, rather than on an interim basis,” “exercising authority under 31 U.S.C. 5336(a)(11)(B)(xxiv) of the CTA to exempt domestic reporting companies from any BOI reporting requirements.”
And on the mechanism: “Redefining the term 'reporting company' was perhaps the single most important change that the IFR made. … The IFR eliminated domestic entities from the definition of a reporting company. It also added language under which any entity that fit the old definition of a domestic reporting company would now be exempted from the new definition.”
The passage that names associations
Commenters asked Treasury for an HOA-specific carve-out. The rule's answer is the quotable line:
“Other commenters suggested other narrower exemptions, such as for one- or two-person businesses or for homeowners associations.”
“Under the evaluation framework imposed by the CTA, Treasury is not persuaded that any of the targeted approaches that commenters have proposed are as effective at obtaining useful BOI on a benefit-to-burden ratio basis. The final rule therefore adopts the blanket exemption approach of the IFR. This approach obviates any need to create additional exemptions applicable to subcategories of U.S. entities, such as homeowners associations.”
Associations were visible to Treasury, and they are covered by the broader exemption rather than a narrower one.
Why a New York association is categorically outside the rule
A New York condominium board of managers, a New York homeowners association and a New York cooperative apartment corporation are organised under New York law — as not-for-profit corporations, business corporations or unincorporated associations. Each is an entity created in the United States. Each is therefore outside the definition of “reporting company” entirely.
The operative amendments, verbatim: “(5) Special exemptions. (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. (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.”
Concretely, for a New York board: no initial report, no update when the board turns over at the annual meeting, no FinCEN identifier maintenance, and no penalty exposure. Directors who already obtained FinCEN IDs have no continuing update or correction duty.
What happens to information already filed
FinCEN addressed this too, and the answer is that boards do not have to chase it:
“FinCEN agrees that the values of privacy, information security, and the trust of the public all argue for the removal from the BO IT System, as much as practicable, of information that would not have been reported if the reporting requirements of this final rule had been in place starting on January 1, 2024.”
“At this time, FinCEN does not anticipate requiring or requesting that U.S. companies or U.S. persons contact FinCEN requesting that their BOI be removed.”
A New York board that filed in 2024, and whose directors are understandably unhappy that their home addresses and identification documents went to Treasury, does not need to petition for deletion.
The one residual risk, and it is a billing risk
This is the point worth making loudly, because it is the only thing left for a board to do: any management company, attorney or vendor still billing a New York association for beneficial ownership compliance work is billing for nothing.
The evidence is in the last two years of invoices. The 2024 filings were a real cost, incurred under a real obligation. Ongoing “BOI monitoring,” “annual BOI review,” or a line item for updating reports on board turnover is not work that needs doing. Our New York budget approval page covers where these professional-services lines sit, and our director qualifications page covers what a New York director's actual filing and disclosure duties are.
FinCEN's press release of August 11, 2026 adds the one carve-out that survives: “Foreign entities that are reporting companies will still be required to report beneficial ownership information for foreign individuals.”2 For a New York association that is only relevant if a foreign entity is somehow in the ownership chain of an association-owned entity, which is vanishingly rare.
An incidental finding that touches New York unit transfers
The rule's footnote 59 records that “On March 19, 2026, a federal district court vacated the Real Estate Reporting Rule. See Flowers Title Co. v Bessent, No. 6:25-CV-127-JDK, 2026 WL 782283 (E.D. Tex. Mar. 19, 2026), appeal docketed, 26-40285 (5th Cir. May 13, 2026).”
That is FinCEN's separate residential real-estate-transfer reporting rule — the one that would have required reporting on non-financed transfers of residential property to certain entities and trusts. It is vacated and on appeal. It matters to New York condominium and co-op transfers into LLCs and trusts, which are common at the top of the market, and it is a separate thread from the beneficial-ownership regime.
What did not go away in New York
Two things easily confused with this.
New York's own LLC Transparency Act is still on the books. It reaches limited liability companies, which is not what a New York association is — but an LLC that owns a unit or a lot in your community is a reporting company under that state Act. A bill that would have kept New York's definitions from shrinking along with the federal ones was vetoed in December 2025, which leaves New York's definitions cross-referenced to the federal statute and FinCEN's regulations. That is a question for unit-owning LLCs and their counsel, not for the board.
And New York's ordinary corporate filings are unaffected. A New York not-for-profit corporation still has its own obligations under the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, and dissolution still runs under N-PCL § 1003 with Tax Department consent. Nothing federal changed any of that. Our New York governing statute page covers the corporate framework a New York association actually operates under.
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