BOI reporting could return as 20 states and DC sue Treasury over small-business exemption

The case, Oregon v. Bessent, challenges FinCEN's interim final rule of March 2025 and the final rule that took effect Aug. 14, 2026. Together they exempt every company formed in the United States from reporting its owners under the Corporate Transparency Act. According to the complaint, as Land Line reported, the 2021 law covered more than 32 million companies, and fewer than 30,000 still have to report. The states argue that an agency cannot repeal a law passed by Congress by writing a rule.

The suit also targets FinCEN's plan to delete reports that U.S. companies already filed, a step the states expect by Feb. 10, 2027, at the latest. They say the law requires the records to be kept for five years or more after a company shuts down and that the purge also breaks the Federal Records Act. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, one of 21 attorneys general in the coalition, said the rollback helps people who hide money in shell companies. FinCEN has taken the position that collecting the data from these companies does not serve the public interest, Bonta's office noted, and Treasury said in the interim rule that it had weighed the risk of illegal activity, according to Land Line.

Nothing changes for now. FinCEN's BOI page says U.S. companies are exempt and do not need to file. If the court sets the rules aside, the duty could come back for domestic companies, including owner-operators who run their trucks through an LLC. The Oregon Department of Justice case tracker lists the complaint as the only filing so far, and no hearing date has been posted.