SBE Council Applauds Treasury for Ending CTA-BOI Mandate; Congress Must Make Small Business Relief Permanent

By SBE Council at 24 August, 2026, 11:19 am

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Treasury Fixed the Regulation. Congress Must Fix the Law.

Washington, D.C. - The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) applauded the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) for finalizing its rule ending the burdensome Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting mandate for U.S. businesses and individuals under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), and for taking the important additional step of deleting previously submitted information pertaining to U.S. persons.

The final rule, announced August 11 and effective August 14, permanently exempts U.S. companies and U.S. persons from the BOI reporting requirement under current regulations. FinCEN also confirmed that it will delete information from its BOI database about individuals it reasonably believes are U.S. persons.

SBE Council President & CEO Karen Kerrigan stated the following:

"This is a solid victory for America's small businesses and entrepreneurs. Alongside our small business allies, SBE Council has fought the BOI mandate from the beginning because it imposed an unnecessary and intrusive reporting regime on millions of law-abiding small business owners, backed by severe penalties for noncompliance. We thank President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for listening to small business concerns and following through with decisive action to end this misguided mandate.

"We are very pleased that Treasury and FinCEN have committed to deleting the personal information of U.S. persons that was already collected from a significant number of small businesses. Small business owners who complied with the mandate should not have their sensitive personal information sitting indefinitely in a federal government database for a reporting regime that Treasury has now determined should not apply to them."

Kerrigan noted, however, that the job is not fully finished. Regulatory relief, even when made final, is not the same as statutory repeal. A future administration could revisit the regulation and attempt to resurrect the costly and intrusive reporting regime. That is why SBE Council continues to urge passage of the Repealing Big Brother Overreach Act, H.R. 425 and S. 100, sponsored by Representative Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), which would repeal the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) itself.

Kerrigan added:

"Congressional action is especially important because efforts continue to surface that would expand government collection of beneficial ownership or similar information through other mechanisms. Small business owners should not have to continually defend themselves against new versions of a mandate that was fundamentally flawed from the outset. The federal government already possesses extensive law enforcement, tax, banking and financial tools to pursue criminals and illicit finance. The answer should not be treating tens of millions of legitimate American small businesses as potential suspects and requiring them to continually report personal ownership information to Washington. Passage of the Repealing Big Brother Overreach Act would provide entrepreneurs with something an administrative rule alone cannot fully deliver: long-term certainty that this costly, invasive and unnecessary federal mandate will not return."

SBE Council has been actively engaged on the CTA and BOI reporting mandate, raising concerns about its compliance burden, privacy and data-security risks, confusing requirements and disproportionate impact on the nation's smallest businesses. The organization will continue working with Congress and business allies to secure permanent statutory repeal of the CTA and oppose efforts to recreate similar reporting burdens through other federal mandates. SBE Council is also monitoring the constitutional challenge to the CTA/BOI reporting mandate and signed a May 2026 business coalition letterurging the federal government to support Supreme Court review of the CTA.

CONTACT:

KAREN KERRIGAN, [email protected]

SBE Council is a nonpartisan advocacy, research and education organization dedicated to protecting small business and promoting entrepreneurship. For more than 30 years, SBE Council has advanced a range of private sector and public policy initiatives to strengthen the ecosystem for strong startup activity and small business growth.

Visit www.sbecouncil.org for additional information. X: @SBECouncil

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