Corporate Transparency Act & HOAs: Must You File?

Most HOAs and condo associations do not have to file anything with FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act right now. A March 2025 federal rule change exempted virtually every U.S.-formed entity, including community associations, from the law’s beneficial ownership reporting requirement. This guide explains what changed, why boards are still hearing about it, and what is still unsettled.

What the Corporate Transparency Act requires

The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), codified at 31 U.S.C. § 5336, is a 2021 federal law aimed at stopping anonymous shell companies from being used to launder money or hide assets. It created a new filing requirement: covered “reporting companies” must send FinCEN — the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — a beneficial ownership information (BOI) report listing the individuals who own or control the entity.

When the rule first took effect, the definition of “reporting company” was broad enough to sweep in most small U.S. corporations, LLCs, and similar entities, with 23 narrow categories exempted (banks, large operating companies, and a handful of others). A community association organized as a nonprofit corporation wasn’t automatically on that exemption list, which is why the question came up at all.

Why HOAs are exempt as of the 2025 rule change

Boards don’t have to file today because FinCEN rewrote who counts as a “reporting company” in the first place. In an interim final rule effective March 2025, FinCEN limited that definition to entities formed under the law of a foreign country that have registered to do business in a U.S. state or tribal jurisdiction. Every entity created under U.S. state law — including the corporation, unincorporated association, or nonprofit that runs your HOA or condo — fell outside the new definition entirely.

That single change removed more than 99% of the entities that would have previously had to report, according to FinCEN’s own accounting, and it applies with no special carve-out language needed for associations: a domestically formed HOA was never a “reporting company” to begin with under the revised rule, so there’s no separate HOA exemption to claim. It’s simply outside the law’s current scope.

Boards we’ve advised have asked some version of “do we need to file this?” as recently as this year, almost always because a 2024 email from a management company, insurer, or law firm told them to get ready — advice that predates the March 2025 rule and is now out of date for a domestically formed association.

What is still unsettled

The current exemption comes from an interim rule, not a permanent statutory change, and three things are still in motion:

• A further final rule. FinCEN sent a final rule on beneficial ownership reporting to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review in June 2026. That rule is expected to set the lasting definition of who has to report — it could confirm the current exemption or narrow it.
• Active litigation. Constitutional challenges to the CTA are working through multiple federal circuits. One appeals court upheld the law; three others have paused their cases to wait for FinCEN’s final rule.
• Pending legislation. Bills introduced in the House and Senate in April 2026 would write the current domestic exemption directly into the statute, which would make it harder to reverse through a future rule change alone.

None of this changes what your board needs to do today, but it’s the reason this isn’t a topic to file away permanently. A rule that exists because of an agency’s discretionary interpretation can be revised by a future rule in a way a statutory exemption can’t.

The BOI filing scam boards should watch for

A real and separate risk from the reporting rule itself is fraud. FinCEN’s own alert, FIN-2024-Alert005, describes letters, emails, and texts that impersonate FinCEN or made-up agencies, cite fake form numbers, and demand a “filing fee” with an urgent penalty threat if the board doesn’t pay by a deadline.

Three facts make these easy to spot once you know them:

• FinCEN charges no fee to file a BOI report directly through its system.
• FinCEN does not send correspondence demanding payment for BOI filing.
• There is no such form as “Form 4022” or “Form 5102.” Any letter citing one is fabricated.

If your association receives one of these letters, don’t click any link or scan any QR code in it, and don’t wire money or send owner personal information in response. Forward it to your management company and, if it asks for payment, to your state’s consumer-protection office.

What to do with your board’s time instead

Since there’s no filing to make, the useful action for most boards is a short governance record, not a compliance project:

1. Add a line to your board minutes noting that the association reviewed its status under the Corporate Transparency Act and confirmed it currently falls outside FinCEN’s reporting-company definition as a domestically formed entity.
2. Keep that note with your governing documents, the same file where you keep insurance certificates and audit reports. It shows due diligence if a vendor or resident raises the question again.
3. Ask your association’s attorney to flag any rule change, rather than monitoring FinCEN.gov yourself — this is exactly the kind of narrow, fast-moving federal rule where a five-minute check-in with counsel beats trying to track it in-house. See our guide on when you need an HOA lawyer if your board doesn’t already have one on retainer.
4. Ignore any vendor selling “CTA compliance filing services” to your association right now. If a company is charging a fee to file a report your association isn’t currently required to file, that’s a red flag on its own.

Bottom line

The Corporate Transparency Act does not require a domestically formed HOA or condo association to file anything with FinCEN today. That’s the direct result of FinCEN’s March 2025 rule change, not a special HOA carve-out. What hasn’t settled is whether a future final rule, a court decision, or new legislation moves that line again — which is worth a standing item on your board’s agenda, not a filing deadline on your calendar.

For more on the compliance and financial-reporting side of running a board, see our guide to HOA audit requirements or browse the full Run Your HOA hub.