Treasury Department repeals Biden-era reporting requirement for US businesses

The Treasury Department on Tuesday officially repealed a requirement for American companies and individuals to report beneficial ownership information to its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.

The department initially proposed the repeal in March 2025 and published the final rule in the Federal Register on Tuesday.

In addition to repealing the reporting requirement, the rule, among other policy changes, exempts Americans who have obtained FinCEN IDs from having to update or correct the information they provided to receive them. It also eliminates the requirement for foreign companies to report Americans who helped them register to do business in the U.S.

FinCEN defines a beneficial owner as an individual who, directly or indirectly, owns at least 25 percent of a company or exercises “substantial interest” over the firm. The enforcement network does not consider trusts, corporations or other legal entities to be beneficial owners. 

Foreign entities that are reporting companies must still report beneficial ownership information for foreign individuals. By maintaining this requirement, the rule states it will assist law enforcement in investigating, prosecuting and disrupting the “financing of international terrorism, other transnational security threats, and other types of domestic and transnational financial crime when foreign entities are used to engage in such activities.”

The Treasury Department during the Biden administration implemented the initial reporting requirement pursuant to the Corporate Transparency Act, which Congress passed as part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2021. The requirement went into effect at the start of 2024.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday his department’s repeal of the requirement “is a victory for common sense” and U.S. small businesses.

“President Trump promised to cut red tape, and this final rule delivers,” Bessent said in a release. “Treasury is eliminating a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.”

In a statement, progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) blasted the department’s repeal of the requirement as a “gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions” through the financial system. 

Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, also noted Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously praised the reporting requirement, which he proposed during his time as a senator representing Florida. 

“My ‘Corporate Transparency Act’, the most significant anti-corruption & money laundering law in decades & which forces anonymous shell companies to disclose their true owners is going to pass as part of the end of year defense bill,” Rubio wrote on the social platform X in December 2020.

The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment. 

Warren also called on Bessent to “reverse” the move and testify before the Senate Banking panel “to explain why he’s putting American national security at risk.”

Former Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski (N.J.), who pushed for the Corporate Transparency Act while in the lower chamber, said the law’s purpose “is to prevent drug traffickers, Russian & Chinese kleptocrats, and other international criminals from setting up anonymously owned companies to hide their money” in the U.S.

“Treasury deleting the beneficial ownership info it already gathered is utterly crazy,” Malinowski wrote Tuesday on X. “This database was not public — it was just for law enforcement to use in investigating crimes. It’s like Trump ordering the deletion of the FBI’s fingerprint database.”