Ownership information collected from U.S. companies under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) will be deleted when an interim rule is finalized by the end of the 2025 calendar year.
In June of this year, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) released its Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) for 2025. The index assigns a numerical rank to countries that assist companies and individuals in hiding their financial activity and holdings. Formerly released every two years, the index is now published on a rolling basis to provide more accurate real-time data.
The FSI is an assessment of how much the jurisdiction contributes to global financial secrecy. In 2022, the United States ranked first, a distinction that highlights gaps in regulatory oversight related to onshore tax secrecy, tax fraud and other tax crimes.
The Beneficial Owner Registry
In 2022, through a bipartisan effort, the CTA was passed into federal law in an effort to reduce the opaque nature of shell companies operating in the U.S. Effective in 2024, the CTA aimed to reduce tolerance for secrecy and address issues with money laundering conducted through shell companies in the U.S. Under the CTA, companies with less than 20 employees were required to submit a range of information about their beneficial ownership. The idea behind the registry was to pull aside the corporate veil on dirty money transactions. U.S. law enforcement, government, and other agencies could review and use the registry.
In March 2025, the shifting priorities of the incoming administration led the U.S. Treasury to issue an interim rule removing the requirement for U.S. companies to report beneficial ownership information. The requirement now only applies to foreign companies doing business in the U.S.
In September, Andrea Gacki, the current director of FinCEN, testified on a number of matters before the U.S. House of Representatives, including the interim rule which removed the obligation of U.S. companies to report ownership information to FinCEN. In her remarks, Gacki noted the interim rule will be finalized by the end of the calendar year, at which time beneficial ownership information reported by U.S. companies under the now defunct rule will be deleted.
Depending on your perspective, the good news is that the opacity of U.S. shell companies remains secure. The bad news? On the 2025 TJN FSI, the U.S. once again ranked first.
Concealing Something From the IRS?
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