{4 minutes to read}  The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) is the federal law that went into effect on January 1, 2024, requiring virtually every small business in the United States to file certain information with a government agency, FinCEN.

In this article, I explain when, as a company owner, you have to file a report on behalf of your company with FinCEN. There are two different categories of companies that must file, with two different deadlines. 

If your company was registered in any state in the United States before January 1, 2024, or if you have a foreign company that was registered to do business in any state in the United States before January 1, 2024, that company has one full year — that is until January 1, 2025 — to report the proper information with FinCEN. 

The next category is companies that are formed on or after January 1, 2024, or companies that were registered in the United States in any state on or after January 1, 2024. Those companies have 90 days to report to FinCEN. You would think that the companies already in existence would have a shorter time in which to report, with the newer companies having a longer period, but that's not the case. The companies that are newly formed will have 90 days from January 1, 2024, to file those reports with FinCEN. As of January 1, 2025, those newly formed companies will only have 30 days. So, the report periods will get shorter for newly formed companies.

What information does each type of company, have to report?

•A company that was in existence before January 1, 2024, has to report information about its Beneficial Owners.

•A company that is registered to do business in the United States on or after January 1, 2024, has to report not only its Beneficial Owners but also the Company Applicants. (Don't worry about what a Beneficial Owner or a Company Applicant is. There are other articles to explain those specific terms used in the Act). 

This article lets you know what the reporting deadlines are. There is a series of videos about the CTA on our website, where you can find a list of the links.