Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: FinCen, BOI filing

[Kaye B (kayebpdx]

For those who may not know, the Corporate Transparency Act is a federal 
law enacted to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and other 
illicit activities. It requires reporting companies (including HOAs) to 
disclose information about their beneficial owners to the Department of 
Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Board members are considered to be beneficial owners, since they are 
important decision-makers and exercise substantial control over the HOA. 
Senior officers who are not Board members may also fall into this category.

I will be filing our community's beneficial ownership information. I 
expect it will be a super simple task. Before I file, each Board member 
and senior officer is getting a FinCEN id. This will ensure that I'm not 
directly handling people's personal information.

Here is where to get a FinCEN id: *https://fincenid.fincen.gov*.It is a 
quick and easy process. You simply provide your full legal name, date of 
birth, address, unique identifying number and issuing jurisdiction from 
an acceptable identification document, and an image of the 
identification document. It takes less than 5 minutes. Then, just give 
the id to the person doing the filing.

There are entities that will handle all of this for you, but at a cost. 
We figure we are saving about $750 by doing it ourselves.

Kaye Blesener
Treasurer
Columbia Ecovillage
Portland, OR