(NOT REQUIRED 3/21/25) How to File BOI (Voluntary), BOI Update, Filing BOI Report, BOI EFile FinCEN

You may have become recently aware of the requirement to file the BOI report. Vincent recently updated their website with an alert: a federal court injunction paused the BOI filing requirement, but you may still choose to file your BOI report anyway. Every business owner has to make their own decision. I created a mini video course on how to file the BOI report and what you need to know about it to stay in compliance, just in case the injunction gets overturned. So let's get started. The BOI report, it applies to almost every small business in America. If you're business registered with the Secretary of State in your state, then this applies to you. More specifically, if you formed an LLC or a corporation, doesn't matter if it's an S-Corp or C-Corp, either way, if you formed an entity with the Secretary of State in your state, you are required to file the BOI report. There are a few exceptions, but I'll go over that in just a minute. FinCEN created a Small Entity Compliance Guide specifically for small businesses because they knew that there were going to be questions about the report, what's required, what's not required, who it applies to. I've highlighted some sections that I thought would be most useful for small businesses. I've provided a link to that guide in the description, so I hope that helps. Just a quick note though, FinCEN is going to be evolving its guidance over time, and even since I first heard about this last year, the reason why I didn't just jump up and put out a video is because I knew that things were going to change, rules were going to change, and of course they did. Uh, even in that compliance guide that that you have access to down below. There are some deadlines that they mention that aren't accurate to the current rules, so I did mark out certain things inside the guide just to make sure that you guys have the correct notes in there of any deadlines. But we're also going to go over this here. Now, because of the changes, you will want to keep up with FinCEN's website. It's fincen.gov. Be careful and make sure you go to the government's designated website for for this type of information. Be careful about going to outside third-party websites, especially the ones that look like they're government websites, but they don't end in.gov. That's just a quick tip to protect you from being scammed. First, we're going to go over who is FinCEN, what is BOI, who's affected by this new rule, what the requirements are, the deadlines, and the frequency for filing. First off, the US Treasury has several bureaus that it created that handle specific operations for the government, and one of which is the IRS, which you've all heard of. But another one that you may not have been aware of is FinCEN, and that stands for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, but the abbreviation is F-I-N-C-E-N. As of January 1st, 2024, that's when this rule became effective and started requiring small businesses mainly to file this BOI report. The BOI report stands for the Beneficial Ownership Information Report. What FinCEN's trying to do by requiring this report to be filed is to keep track of who owns the businesses that are registered with each state and who actually runs the company and has the power to make decisions in these companies. So they're not just looking for technical, you know, who actually signed the document to create the company. They're also looking for the people who actually run it. So that person may be assigned a title in the business, but they're not necessarily written down as one of the official owners. We'll go over a few more examples and details in a little bit. As I said before, this filing mainly applies to LLCs and corporations. It also applies to any entity that was registered with their Secretary of State. It does not apply to sole proprietors. If you are a sole proprietor registered, for example, with your county, which is the correct way to do that, then you are not required to file this report. The responsibility of filing this report is a federal responsibility. It's like filing your tax return, so you have to file it if if it applies to you. And the information that they're looking for on this report is similar to what might be reported on a franchise tax report like the Public Information Report. Just a heads up, if you fail to file, there are civil and criminal penalties involved. There's a daily penalty of $591 a day, and the criminal penalties are 2 years of imprisonment. Yes, jail time, 2 years. And up to $10,000 in fines. This is not a report that you want to skip over and not take care of. So I just want to let you guys know there are penalties involved. They are harsh because they just want for you to file, but the actual report itself is very simple to file, and it'll be easy to keep up with the updates as long as you follow the instructions I gave you today. There's a heads up: if your company was terminated, the LLC or corporation or whatnot, if it was terminated before January 1st, 2024, then you are not required to file a BOI report for your LLC or corporation. But here's the thing: if you terminated it, you have to have followed all of the rules involved with terminating a company, completing all of your tax returns. You will have had to make sure that all the assets were already disposed of, and that basically it's like zeroing out a bank account. And that includes one of the requirements, but basically all business that's involved with that LLC or corporation has to have been completed before January 1st, 2024. If you closed your, your LLC, you decided to go ahead and shut it down because you weren't using it, or you're a corporation or whatnot, you weren't using the company, and you decide to close it later, anytime from the 1st going forward for 2024, then you are required to still file a BOI even if your company is closed. If it was still in existence by January 1st, 2024, you have to file a BOI report. Now there's 4 different types of filings that are associated with the BOI report. There's an initial report for any company that existed before 2024, meaning December 31st, 2023 or older. Any company that was already formed in existence, your deadline to file is— they gave you a full year since the beginning of the year where they let everybody know you're their going to start being required to file this report. Doesn't matter how many years old your company is or if you just started it in 2023, in December even. Get that BOI report filed. Now, if your company was formed, registered with the Secretary of State in 2024, then your deadline was 90 days. Once you've passed your deadline, technically you are subject to the civil or criminal penalties. But as long as you didn't file your BOI report on purpose, FinCEN likely will not apply any penalties to your company. So if you haven't filed your BOI report and you created your company this year in 2024, then you had 90 days to do it. And if you haven't done it within the 90 days, hurry up and do it today. It's so simple, won't take you but a few minutes to get done, and that way you're in compliance. And if they ever send you a letter, you'll be able to respond with the reason of you, whatever your situation is, even if it's that you were just now becoming aware of the filing responsibility. Now, for any company that is created, an LLC or corporation or a similar entity that's formed with your Secretary of State starting from 2025, and I mean January 1st, 2025, any company that is formed from that point in 2025 going forward, you only have 30 days. You only have 30 days to file this BOI report. It's one of those things that you're just going to have to stay on top of to make sure it gets done. I would recommend that as soon as you get your confirmation that your LLC or corporation has been successfully formed with the Secretary of State, that's when they expect for you to go ahead and file your BOI report. Now, all of that was about the initial filing. There are 3 other filing types that the BOI report involves. The second one is if there's any changes to your report. Say if you filed your BOI report already, but you needed to do an update and you needed to change something that you originally filed on the BOI report, you have 30 days to get that completed. 30 days is the actual deadline. So there's not an extra, oh, I forgot type of thing. You really need to get it done and stay on top of any changes that need to be made. But I am going to tell you a couple of tips that'll make your updates a little bit easier and simpler. And make it easier to be in compliance and stay in compliance. The third type of report is a correction. If you filed a BOI report already and then you realize that there was a mistake made on the report that you made, you must check the option of report corrections because that's how they'll know that they need to adjust something that you previously reported. So make sure that you choose the right option when you're filing, whether it's an initial filing, a change in your filing that you already submitted, a correction of a filing that you already submitted, or the fourth option, which is you became newly exempt. We're going to go over in what case an entity is considered exempt, uh, but just know for now that if you're— if you start filing the BOI report because you're required to at this time, if in the future you end up not being required to file this BOI report, or you're not required to keep it updated or whatnot because you fall within the right category of the rules, then you would choose the option of newly exempt and you have 30 days to do that. But just know that if for any reason you became exempt and you reported that you became exempt, filing the BOI report and marking that option, if after that point, once you've reported that you became exempt, you become not exempt anymore, you also once again have to file an updated report to let them know that there's been a change and what the change is, that you're no longer exempt. Now, the good thing about this BOI report is that it's not an annual filing, so you don't have to file it every year. It's not like a regular tax return where you have to file your tax return every year. The BOI report only has to be reported once, and then if there's any changes, then you have to report that change, or you have to report a correction, or you're reporting that you were newly exempt or became unexempt, whatever the case may be. But just know that unless there's any changes, you only have to file this BOI report one time. But we are going to go over a couple of situations that apply to most people, and again, still not an every year thing, but when this situation happens to you, you'll need to file an updated report. Okay, now the information you report on the BOI report, you might be wondering who gets access to this. The first thing that should make you feel a little bit relieved is that they're going to store it in a secure, non-public database, and they're using rigorous information security methods and controls typically used in the federal government to protect non-classified yet sensitive information systems at the highest security level. FinCEN is taking it seriously that they are asking you for these pieces of information about who the beneficial owner is of each company, and so they're going to try to protect your information as best that they can from just anybody from getting access to it. The filing of the BOI report falls under the Corporate Transparency Act, and there are 6 categories of department officials that can access the BOI information that was reported to FinCEN. Once you file and this information is in that database, there's only 6 categories of department officials that can access this beneficial ownership information. And I'm going to read these off to you because I want to make sure that I don't misrepresent the specifics of what department officials may be able to request this information from FinCEN. Number 1 is federal agencies engaged in national security, intelligence, or law enforcement activity. Number 2, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies with court authorization. Number 3, officials at the Department of the Treasury. Number 4, foreign law enforcement agencies, judges, prosecutors, and other authorities that submit a request through a U.S. federal agency to obtain beneficial ownership information for authorized activities related to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement. FinCEN has to do with crimes, and so that's why the wording here is specifically regarding law enforcement agencies and courts and judges and prosecutors and things like that, and national security intelligence and things like that. So if you're not going to be involved in any type of criminal activities or criminal prosecutions, then you likely will never have your beneficial ownership information requested. Number 5: Financial institutions with customer due diligence requirements under applicable law in order to facilitate compliance with these requirements. So to the extent that the banks have to, or other financial institutions have to, do customer due diligence to make sure that they're also in compliance with the law, that will also dictate what type of access they could possibly get. Number 6 is federal functional regulators or other appropriate regulatory agencies that supervise or assess financial institutions with access to beneficial ownership information in order to supervise such financial institutions' compliance with customer due diligence requirements. So basically, the federal regulators of the financial institutions are going to be monitoring the financial institutions on whether or not they're following all the rules regarding access to the beneficial ownership information. So there's several layers of security that's being put into place to protect your information. So hopefully that makes you feel a little bit better about having to provide your beneficial ownership information on the report. Now, I mentioned before we were going to go over the entities that are exempt from filing the BOI report. There are 23 exemptions to filing the BOI report that FinCEN came up with, and the list is available in that guide that's available in the link down in the description. So make sure you get a copy of that. For now, I'm just going to cover 3 of them because all of the other ones seem to apply to companies that are already providing quite a bit of information to the government, the federal government, regarding who owns what and who is doing what regarding finances or whatnot. For example, banks are exempt because they have to file quite a bit of information already with the government. So the government's already familiar with who is the owner of what. So the 3 exemptions that I wanted to go over to make sure that you guys had a, a decent idea of whether or not these situations could possibly apply to you. Number 1 is if you have a big company and you're making $5 million in gross receipts or sales, and, and you have 20 full-time employees, then you would be exempt from filing the BOI report because they've already got enough information that you're providing to them whenever you file your regular your payroll documents and, and different documents that they require for you to file. But if you don't make $5 million in gross receipts and sales and have 20 full-time employees, then this would not apply to you and you would not be exempt. Two more exemptions that I want to go over. Okay, if you are a 501 nonprofit company, then you are exempt, but you have to have already been recognized by the IRS and designated the 501 exemption for the 501 status in order to qualify to not have to file the BOI report. It also applies to trusts that only have charitable interests. Now the last one is inactive companies, and I'm going to go over this one in a bit more detail in case it applies to you so that you're clear on whether or not you are exempt from filing the BOI report. Now if you are exempt from filing the BOI report, you literally don't have to do anything. You don't have to report that you're exempt or anything. You just continue doing business like you normally do. Okay, now an inactive company has to meet 6 requirements, and you have to meet all 6 requirements. The first one is your company had to have been in existence on or before January 1st, 2020. The second thing is not being engaged in active business. Nothing, absolutely nothing is happening with this company. Number 3, it cannot be owned by a foreign person, whether directly or indirectly. Wholly or partially. That's the third requirement you have to meet if you want to be exempt. The fourth one is that the company has not experienced any change in ownership in the preceding 12-month period. So long as the company is inactive and it hasn't changed ownership in the last 12 months, then you can check this box off as well. Number 5: the company has not sent or received any funds in an amount greater than $1,000 either directly or through a financial account in which the entity or any affiliate of the entity had an interest in the last 12 months. That's another qualification required, that no funds in the amount of $1,000 or more directly or indirectly through a financial account, however, has been received in or sent. Like, you couldn't have paid off the last bill or something like that within the last 12 months, otherwise you would be disqualified from being exempt, and you would have to file your BOI report. And number 6 is the company does not otherwise hold any kind or type of assets, whether in the United States or abroad. So that means in another country, including any ownership interest in any corporation, limited liability company, or other similar entity. That means the inactive company, in order to qualify, can't have owned any assets in the U.S. or outside of the U.S. At the end of the day, this would probably apply to anybody who created an LLC, but once they created it, they did nothing with the LLC. So if you do meet all 6 of these requirements, you can choose to not file the BOI report. If you want to be on the safe side because you're kind of not sure about whether or not you're disqualified from any of these requirements, then on the safe side, you'd go ahead and just file the BOI report. And make sure that you keep up with any updates that you have to make. I'm going to go over a few best practices that I recommend in order to make your life a little bit easier and simpler. Okay, so FinCEN allows you to file either a PDF version of the BOI report, or you can just straight e-file the report by filling in the information online and then submitting it. I recommend you choose the online e-filing option because you'll, you'll get all the information that you need, and to me, it's a little bit simpler than having to download the PDF, fill it out, and upload it in order to submit it. So that's just my take on it, but if you prefer the PDF method, you can go ahead and choose that option. FinCEN created a couple of options to make it easier for keeping up with compliance on the BOI report, and, uh, one of them involves getting your FinCEN ID number. So what they did was they allowed you as an individual to create a FinCEN ID number. It's basically like an identification number that represents you as an individual, it would cover the information that normally you would fill in all the details of your information. But because you apply for this FinCEN ID number, then you wouldn't have to type in your information every time you have to file a BOI report or have to file an update. In the long run, it saves you a lot of time by creating this FinCEN ID number. Now, in addition to the FinCEN ID number for yourself, it's considered an individual FinCEN ID number. They also allow you to create a FinCEN ID number for your company. which is called the Reporting Company FinCEN ID number. Now, what this represents is all the information that is related to what you would file on a BOI report. Think of all this information being like in a bag, and you put your ID in there, you put your birth date in there, you put your name, your address, you know, you put all your information in this bag. Then you get a ticket for your bag, right? Because now this ticket represents everything that's in this bag. When you have to use this information again, or prepare it, file it, give it to somebody else to put it on their report, if your information applies to them, then that ID number is the only thing you have to hand off. You don't have to give them all of the details that you wrote. They'll just have this number that represents, an ID number that represents all the information you put in this bag. So that's kind of the simplest way that I could think of to make it easy for you to understand how the FinCEN ID numbers work, whether it's the one for the individual person or for the company. Now, if you don't want to create a FinCEN ID number, you do not have to. You don't have to apply for one. You can just file the PDF or online version and submit it, and you're good to go. Drawback here though, if you just go straight through and you don't have a FinCEN ID number that you're using on this report, you're going to end up having to fill out a full BOI report again whenever you do any updates. So all the information that you're asked for in a BOI report, you're going to have to actually update that line by line as if you're starting over again when you have to fill out any updates. I definitely recommend getting both FinCEN ID numbers, the one for yourself as well as for your company, and that way in the future it'll make your job easier. And I'll explain a little bit more why in just a bit. Part of what the BOI report requires is for you to report who actually did the application to form your company. So if you used a third party, say if you hired an accountant or an attorney to set up your company with the Secretary of State, you're going to have to provide all the same information that's required for the company applicant: name, address, driver's license copy, passport copy. You're going to need to provide these things on your BOI report unless they also got a FinCEN ID number. Again, here's one of those benefits that pops up if you have a FinCEN ID number. If that third party, the attorney, the accountant, or whatnot, has a FinCEN ID number, they can give that to you, and you can put that in the blank, and then you don't have to fill out any of the other details. They don't have to share their copy of their driver's license or any of that stuff with you. So you can see how the privacy thing works when you're using FinCEN ID numbers. Now, if you used a company like LegalZoom or Incfile, any of these companies where everything is completely automated on their website and you're just filling out the information like you're filling out an application yourself or whoever you had do it, if you've done that and it wasn't an actual personal person, you know, with LegalZoom or anything like that, and it was all pretty much automated, then you won't have to put their information. You would just put whoever's information that actually typed in the information. And there's a couple more rules to who else would be considered a company applicant, but we'll go over that in just a second too. But if you had LegalZoom or something like that where it's all automated, you don't have to have their information. Now, if you hired an accountant or an attorney and they're not willing to give you their personal information, then you're going to need to urge them to get their FinCEN ID number in order to get your BOI report. Filed so that you don't get held accountable for not filing your BOI report or not accurately filing your BOI report. Vincennes hasn't really given a whole lot of guidance on what other options are regarding, uh, filing your BOI report. Personally, I think the safest thing to do is to file a BOI report and list the information that you do have and then make a correction in the future. If your state driver's license or state ID or passport, if any of those are expired but the information on there is accurate, is current, like on your driver's license or ID, your address and all that information is, is up to date and accurate, then you can still upload the copy of that. Once you get your updated driver's license, then you would have to file an updated BOI report where you update the copy of the driver's license that they have on file. Another situation you might run into is if your state ID, driver's license, passport, if it doesn't match your full legal name exactly, and I'm— by full legal name, I mean what's on your birth certificate, what should be on your Social Security card, and supposed to be on your legal documents like your driver's license and passport and whatnot. If it does not match, but it does have like your name and that's what you've been using, you can still use that ID so that you can go ahead and file your BOI report. If you ever get your driver's license or ID or passport updated with your full legal name, then once you've done that, you'd go ahead and submit that and do an updated BOI report. And just a heads up, the BOI report is going to ask you for your middle name. And I know on most forms, even I tend to not fill out that information because it seems extra, if you will. Well, it comes to this FinCEN report, because it is the federal government, when they ask for your middle name, you need to write down what your middle name is, whether you have one or two, whatever the case may be. If you don't have one, that's fine. They're not going to force everybody to have one, of course. But at the end of the day, if you have one, you're legally required to provide your full legal name, including your middle name, a suffix if you have one, whole nine yards. They want your full legal name. Something to note is that if you're filing a corrected BOI report, you only have 30 days to get that correction updated in the system by marking that it is a correction and not just an update. But as long as you do the update within 90 days, you won't get penalized for filing incorrect information. So you're supposed to do it within 30 days. If there's a correction specifically and you learn about it later, you have 30 days from the time that you realized or found out that the information was incorrect. But as long as you do it within 90 days, you won't get penalized with the fines, which again was $591 a day. Don't want to get hit with that one. The rule of thumb to keep in mind though is basically any change to the BOI report, the deadline is 30 30 days. So if you can keep up with that rule, then you'll be fine and you'll be in compliance. You don't have to worry about the civil and criminal penalties involved. So let's go over a few situations that would require you to update your BOI report or your FinCEN ID number. So once you get your FinCEN ID number, the information that you provide there, you would need to keep that updated. And if that's the only information that needs to get updated that would change on your BOI report, once you've updated the information under your FinCEN ID number, then it would automatically automatically report the update under your BOI report, so you would be in compliance. So basically, for example, like if your address changed and you got a FinCEN ID number, all you have to do is update your address with FinCEN's ID number section, and once you've updated it there, it's automatically going to update your BOI report for you. So it's one change, and it's easy to do, and you don't have to refill in all the information again. You just have to make the quick update and submit it, and you're good to go. Now let's go over the different situations that would require an update. But regarding the beneficial owners of the company, if you're getting new owners or if you're removing owners from the company, an example would be is if there was a death of one of the beneficial owners, you'd have to report that deceased owner as no longer an owner. And if they were replaced by somebody else, say if the company was inherited by somebody else after the death of that person, then that new person's name would need to be reported as another owner of the company, and you would have 30 days from the date of the estate being settled. So that's just in the case of if the change of ownership is based on a death. Overall, if you're removing and adding owners, 30 days, that's what you have from the time of the ownership change. Another one is if the company's name changed. If you decide to change, like legally change the name of the company, you have to submit an updated BOI report. If the company's address changes, you have to do an updated BOI report. If your company got a new DBA or they no longer are using certain DBAs, like legally not using a DBA anymore, or they decided to get a new DBA, then that would require you to file an updated BOI report. If the beneficial owner's name changed, address changed, identifying number changed, and that means like your driver's license number or your passport number, your state ID number, If the number itself actually changed, you have to do an update. But I'm going to tell you, for the sake of being on the safe side, I know the DMV, at least in Texas, allows you to do a renewal online. You don't have to take a new picture. You're just verifying that the information is correct. And even if the address and all that stays the same, I still recommend that you go ahead and upload this updated driver's license. And if you got a FinCEN ID number, then you just need to update it there and it'll automatically take care of the BOI report. I'm saying this because if you own more than one company, imagine having to update each BOI report for each company because of one change, right? Versus if you just go in and update your FinCEN ID account, that information gets updated to all the companies automatically so that your BOI reports stay updated. Some of you may own a company in one state, but then you also registered your company in another state, the same company. So say, for example, you were registered in Texas, then you started doing business in California, for example. You would be registered in California as well to do business. This type of change does not require you to file an updated BOI report. So it doesn't matter if you're registered with only one state or if you're registered with multiple states, you only have to file that one BOI report as long as nothing major has changed, like the beneficial owners and all that is all still the same, all the company information is pretty much the same, the address that you originally reported for the company. As long as all that information is still valid, you don't have to provide an updated BOI report. You could just leave everything as is. Once you file your BOI report, if your company gets dissolved and you stop doing business, you've sold all the assets, closed all the bank accounts, you've filed your final tax return, all that stuff happens, there is no need to update your BOI report. So basically, FinCEN would have the last report that you filed, and that's just what they would keep on file because that's the last thing that you filed. They are not interested at this time, according to the current rules, they're not interested in being notified that your company was dissolved. I think I think that's weird that FinCEN wouldn't want to know that your company was dissolved, but that's just what the current rule is right now. Okay, so now I want to go over a few FAQs and extra notes that I took regarding the BOI report. Number 1, what a beneficial owner is. It's an individual who directly or indirectly, number 1, owns or controls at least 25% of the ownership interests of a reporting company. 10, 25% ownership or control. Remember, this is not just about what you filed with the state. This goes a little bit further to ask you straight out. The FinCEN's asking, who owns this? Who's controlling this company? And if they own or control at least 25% of the company, the interest of the company, then have to report their information as a beneficial owner. Number 2, if the person exercises substantial control over the company, which I kind of went into, but a way to figure that out is they had a C-suite title. That means, were they the CEO, the CFO, the COO, any of those folks, you would automatically list them as one of the beneficial owners. Now, for those of you that are in a community property state, like I'm in Texas, and Texas is a community property state, you might be wondering whether or not the spouse has to automatically be listed as a beneficial owner. And in this case, as long as the spouse is not like a legal owner of the company and doesn't have substantial control, once again, ownership or control, 25% or more of the company, the spouse does not need to be listed as a beneficial owner. Now, if you formed your LLC or corporation with your spouse's name and information and they are part owner, like legally part owner, then yes, you do have to list your spouse as a beneficial owner as well. I have a little bit of good news. So any company that was already in existence existence before 2024, before January 1st, 2024, if you were already in existence, you do not have to report who your company applicant is, meaning who prepared the paperwork, who submitted the paperwork for forming your company. And this is helpful because most of y'all that have older companies don't remember who did what and might not even be able to reach that person anymore. So when you file your initial BOI report, you're not going to be required to fill out the company applicant applicant part. You can just check the box saying that you were already existing before January 1st, 2024, and then it'll gray out that section so you don't have to fill it out. Now, if your company was formed in 2024 and going forward, 2024, 2025, whatever, once your company was formed, you needed to go ahead and get the information from the company applicant. Like I said, if you had an accountant or attorney or anybody else besides yourself fill out this information, you need like their name, their address, copy of their ID, all of that stuff. Now, if that person got a FinCEN ID number, all you need is their FinCEN ID number, and you'll be able to use that when you're filing your BOI report. And this is for the company applicant, the person who actually filled out the form and submitted it, whether they did it on paper or online, and the person who actually told that person to do it. So if you hired somebody else to do it and they were providing the service for you— we're not talking about LegalZoom and all that where everything's automated, we're talking about if you hired a person to do it, then you have to list them and you have to list likely yourself being the person who directed them to apply for the formation for your company. The company applicant has to be a person. You cannot list a company's name. If the person that filed it has a FinCEN ID number, you file that. If you were the person that filed your own paperwork, you can put your FinCEN ID number in instead of having to provide all that information. So your FinCEN ID number, remember that as a shortcut to filling in information on the BOI report and for providing updates on your BOI report. And there can't be more than 2 applicants. You can, you have to have at least 1, but you can't have more than 2 individual people that were company applicants for the formation of your company. And again, only if your company was formed in 2024 going forward. It does not apply to 2023 or before then. Because this is a federal requirement, FinCEN provided an extension for filing the BOI report for victims of certain hurricanes, and I'm going to read the list of hurricanes. Just know that if you were involved and a victim of one of these hurricanes, there are more rules that apply, and I urge you to look up that information specifically. If you have access to this BOI course through my membership at LomaRispa.com, or you purchase the course at LomaRispa.com, then you'll have access to the links, in this case, about each of the hurricanes and what extensions have been provided and what the rules are involved in qualifying for this extension. Generally, it looks like they're giving about a 6-month extension, but again, I cannot speak on your specific situation. If you were involved in Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Debbie, Hurricane Beryl— I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right— and Hurricane Francine, any of those hurricanes, Vincennes has already provided guidance on giving you an extension as a business owner to file your BOI report, to give you more time to get that filed, but they still require for it to be filed. So you're not exempt from filing, but you do have a little bit more time to get that filed on time. Now we're going to go over the information and documents that you need to file your BOI report. I'm going to mention it one more time. If you only have one company and one owner, one or two owners, whatnot, don't plan to have any company address changes, company name changes, beneficial owner name address changes, any of that stuff, then you could just go straight through the filing process without getting a FinCEN ID number. But just know that if you have to do an update in the future, you're going to be required to refile all of that same information again in order to provide an updated BOI report. I don't recommend doing it that way, but you can if you want to, if you're trying to keep things as streamlined, as simple as possible. But I think that getting the FinCEN ID numbers is actually what's going to serve you better and will make your life so much easier now and in the future. There's not a lot involved in getting that FinCEN ID number. It's super simple. It's going to make your life way easier. So the information, files, pictures, and equipment that you need is number 1, you're going to need a phone and you're going to be using the phone to verify yourself for authentication, which you can use Google Auth, text message, backup codes, you know, whatnot. But you'll need your phone for that part. And also I prefer that you have a laptop, so a phone and a laptop. And that way you have everything you need to get this spy report filed, get your FinCEN ID number, all that good stuff. And that way you'll be able to save all the information way easier than just trying to do it on your phone. The next thing you'll need to gather is your company information. You need the full legal name that you registered with the Secretary of State. You'll need your DBA that you registered if you have one. Not everybody has a DBA. You may just have created an LLC and they don't have a DBA. That's fine. The third thing you need is your address, your business address. They want the actual street physical address. Address. I cannot stress this enough. You want to know where your company does business, so you'll need an address for your company. And you cannot use your registered agent's address as your business address unless that's literally where you do business. I know this becomes a little bit more complicated for the online businesses, but at the end of the day, you might end up having to put your home address as your address, which once again, if you want to protect yourself best, make sure that you get your FinCEN ID number for yourself. And for your company. And there's a box that you'll check when you're filing your BOI report. That's all you have to do to request your company's FinCEN ID number. We have to go through a different application for getting your FinCEN ID number for yourself as an individual. After the address, you'll need the state that you registered your company, and you'll need your Tax ID number. If your company applied for and has an EIN number, use that. If your company does not have an EIN number, and you do not wish to apply for one, like before you file your VOI report, then use your Social Security number. You can use your Social Security number if you do not have an EIN number, but it's not hard at all. It only takes a couple of minutes to apply for your IRS EIN number. But if you don't want to, that's fine. Just report your Social Security number if you don't have an EIN number to report here. And for the company applicant and the beneficial owner, now if you don't have to report company applicant because you had an existing company before 2024, that's fine. But the same information is needed for the beneficial owner. So I'm going to go over what's needed for both of those sections, whether it applies to you or not. You'll need the full legal name of the beneficial owner or company applicant. That means first, middle, last, suffix, whatever it is, you'll need the full legal name. Let's not play any games here. This is the federal government. They're involved in investigating financial crimes. So let's not get on their radar by doing things that we shouldn't have done, which is failing to give them your full legal You'll need their date of birth. So full legal name, date of birth. You'll need their residential address. That means the actual place they live, a street physical address. You cannot use a PO box. You cannot use your business address unless you live and work at the same place. They need a residential address for the company applicant and for the beneficial owner. And the last thing they need, they need a copy of your ID. Whether you've got a driver's license, a state ID, or you've got a passport. You can use any of those 3, and you need a copy of it either in a JPEG, PNG, or PDF format. So if it's not in one of these 3 formats, you're going to have to take the picture and convert it into one of these formats so you'll be able to upload it to file your BOI report. So now we're going to actually start setting up the accounts that I was talking about that'll make your life easier when it comes to filing the BOI report. And keeping up with any updates that you have to file in the future. The first thing I'm going to have you do is to set up a Login.gov account. That's L-O-G-I-N, Login.gov. Again, this is a government website. To set up new credentials, you only need 3 things. The credentials for Login.gov are so simple, they don't even ask you what your name or social— they don't ask you for any of that information. All they ask you for is for a working email for you to set a password and for you to have an authentication method, meaning text message, SMS, or a phone call. They give you the option to also use an authentication app like Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Twilio Authy. There's a few different ones out there, but they give you the option to use one of these in order to set up your authentication method. They recommend at least 2 methods. So you can use text message and Google authentication, or you also have the option of using backup codes. They can assign you some backup codes and then you save those. If you ever need to log in, you'll have to look up the backup codes. I'm going to recommend that you choose text, Google authentication, and backup codes. Now the backup codes are really just for that. To me, I recommend getting it so that you can save it in your own safe place, just in case you lose access to your phone text messages, or you lose access to your Google Authenticator or Twilio, Microsoft Authenticator, whatever it is, then you'll still have access to your backup codes. So that's what I recommend. And when it comes to the phone, you'll be able to use text message SMS or a phone call where they call you and that you're able to audibly hear what the message is when it comes to a verification code. You can also use a security key. That's a physical device where the code like constantly changes. Uh, it's similar to like the authentication apps, but it's like on an actual device. Uh, I remember Citibank used to have one of those, uh, when I did business with them. But it's cool to have, but then you have to keep up with this device versus just opening up your phone, pulling up the Google Authenticator, and then you can pull up the current code since that code constantly changes. Whenever you need to log in to login.gov. Another authentication method is your government employee PIV or CAC cards. I'm not familiar with it, but apparently it's a government employee ID card. That's an option as well. The last one on the list is a backup code. So there's 5 different methods. There's the authenticator app, the text, uh, voice message, uh, the security key, which is the physical device, the government ID, and then the backup codes. As I said before, I recommend the text authentication, the Google Authenticator, and the backup codes, and that way you're good to go and you'll have less of a chance of getting locked out of your credentials. Once you've set up these 3 things, that's all you need. You can go to login.gov to set up your credentials. Once you go to login.gov, you'll see a screen that asks you to either sign in or to create an account. So you're going to click on Create an Account, enter your email, choose your email language preference. Check the box that you've read and accept the Login.gov rules of use and click submit. You'll get an email asking you to confirm your email. Once you click on the link, it'll take you back to the Login.gov website and allow you to set up your password. Once you choose your password, make sure you save it somewhere safe. These are government credentials that you're setting up. You will need this in the future. We're not only using it here for the FinCEN ID application, but you can also use it to access your online Social Security. Security account. So login.gov is a helpful credential to have, and that saves you some steps. It's the same login information you'll need for that website. At some point, the IRS is looking to also be able to use the same credentials. Right now, the IRS is using ID.me, but they're looking to move into being able to use login.gov. They're just trying to iron out some of the wrinkles of what security methods are in place to make sure all your information is thoroughly protected whenever using these credentials. So for right now, the IRS is still using the ID.me, but the Social Security Administration is using the Login.gov, so you can use it there as well. Choosing your authentication method setup is next. Again, they're going to recommend you, you choose 2. I recommend 3. I recommend you use the authentication application. If you don't already have one that you're using, then you can always just download Google Authentication and then start using it. It'll be linked to your Gmail account if you have one already, and I believe you'd have to have one in order to use Google Authenticator. So just something to keep in mind. Those of you that don't have a Gmail account, I usually recommend having at least one Gmail account because of the other softwares that you get access to through Google, because they offer a lot of stuff for free that is extremely useful in helping you to organize and take care of your business. So you can choose authentication application, text or voice message and backup codes, and then click continue. Once you've chosen the authentication method you want to use, it's going to ask you a few additional pieces of information. For example, if you choose to use an authentication app, it's going to ask you to set a nickname for your authenticator so that you're familiar with where to get the code from whenever they ask you for it. And then they'll give you a QR code that you can scan, which will automatically add that authentication into the on your phone. They'll also provide you a code in case you need to type in the code versus scanning the QR code. And then once you've added that into the app, the app will create a code that you'll be able to use, a revolving code. It's going to constantly change. It stays active for a certain number of seconds and then it switches out into a new code. And that's how your information is able to be kept safe. So once you get your new temporary code from the app, enter that in the box. You can choose to remember the this browser. If you're using your computer or a computer that you use frequently that other people don't necessarily have access to, then you can go ahead and click Remember This Browser. If not, then you might get asked a few additional questions whenever it's time to log in. Go ahead and click Submit for the authentication app settings. If you chose SMS text messaging, then they're going to ask you on this next page for your phone number that you want to use with your credentials. So enter your mobile phone here, or if you want to use a landline or you want to be called instead of text, enter the phone number here and mark either text message or phone call and click Send Code. They're going to send you an authentication code on the next screen and you'll enter that here, and it's going to be a one-time code just like the authentication apps do. Again, you can choose to remember the browser, then click Submit. If you didn't get the code, you can request another code. It says Send Another Code. You can click that and they'll give you another one. If you're having trouble with the phone number you originally entered and you need to enter another one, or you may have accidentally given the wrong phone number, then go ahead and click on that last option which says use another phone number. And they said that the code that they're going to send the phone is going to last for 10 minutes. If you don't have access to that phone in 10 minutes, then you'll have to re-request another code. Once you've submitted the one-time code, they'll take you to the next stage. If you chose backup codes as one of your authentication options. They're going to provide you 10 authentication codes. These codes will be set, and these codes are something that you will want to save somewhere super safe, like your password, because if you need to get access and you lose access to your phone, the app, whatever, the phone number that you are using to receive the call, whatever the case may be, if you lose access to all that, you'll still have access to these backup codes to be able to provide that whenever you're trying to log in to Login.gov. And you can download it, you can print it, or you can copy and paste it. My recommendation is usually to put it into Google Docs where you can save your information in a safe, secure cloud space. That way you can access it wherever you're at. The final part of setting up your Login.gov credentials is click Agree and Continue, and you're all set. Next, we're going to fill out your FinCEN ID application. Click on the link in the description below, and it's also on the screen for you to go straight to the website. You should see a screen like this that shows you a sign in or create an account with Login.gov. Now that you have your Login.gov credentials, you can use that to log in to this application. A few things to remember as you go through this FinCEN application is that there's going to be asterisks next to all of the required information. Because this is a federal application, you're required to fill in any information that applies to you or your situation. For For example, the middle name box does not have an asterisk next to it, but you are required to fill in your middle name if you have one, and even if you have more than one, you have to put in what your actual legal name is, including if you have a suffix or anything like that. You must fill in all those sections on this application. The application is pretty straightforward. It asks for your first name, middle name, last name, suffix if applicable, your date of birth. They have a bubble for the residential address as well as the business address. Fill in both of those because remember, everything you fully fill out on this application keeps you from having to fill out that information on the BOI report. All you'll have to do is enter your FinCEN ID number and you're good to go. So enter both your residential and business street address. This is an actual physical address. It's not a PO Box. This is not your registered agent's address. This is not any of these other addresses that you think should work. It is where you conduct business and where you It's simple and straightforward, which I know people's lives usually are not, but in this case, they're looking for you to simplify it down to choosing what those two addresses are. Fill in your residential address and then click the business address bubble and fill out your business address. On the next section, it's going to ask you which type of ID are you going to provide them. Is it your state-issued driver's license, your state, local, tribe-issued ID, your U.S. passport, or your foreign passport? Fill out the identifying number that assigned on that document, what country issued that document, whether it was the USA or another country, and then what state issued that document. So for example, if you're providing your driver's license and you're in Texas, fill out your ID number, USA, Texas, and on the next part, upload a copy of it. Remember, you can upload a JPEG, a PNG, or a PDF. Upload that here. Click the I Agree bubble to certify that the information furnished is true, correct, and complete. Then hit submit. If you filled out everything correctly, next page will say, congratulations, your FinCEN ID was successfully created. It'll give you a number that starts with a 3. Now this is your individual FinCEN ID number. Anywhere where your specific individual information is needed in a BOI report, instead of giving all of that information, you're just going to give them the ID number and it will substitute for that information because because FinCEN has everything already. And that's why I said when you need to make an update, if the update is only about you personally, like your address or your name or, or your ID was updated, if it's any of those, then all you have to do is come right back here, this the same place where you came for the application. You'll come right back here, log in, all your information will be pulled up, and you can make any necessary changes and updates, then save it. And then wherever you've used your FinCEN ID number, it'll automatically get updated. You won't have to report it to the persons that you provided it to. It'll just automatically get updated. And if you own more than one company, this really becomes a time saver because you do the update here and you're done. It updates all the way through the system. Save this FinCEN ID number like a government-issued ID number because that's what it is. You need to save this number and use it wisely. On this page, you'll also see where it says submission receipt, it has the option to download a copy of your FinCEN application. Please download it, save it into your files. I recommend using Google Drive, save it there, label it correctly so that you can find it if you ever need to look it up, and that way you can keep up with whether or not any updates need to be made. Save that FinCEN ID number because there's like a copy option right there. You can save that into like a Google Doc and then save a copy of this receipt and transcript of your application. And then if you ever have to come back to do an update. Once you log in, you'll see a screen like this that has all your information in it. You'll choose that either you're correcting a prior report or you're just updating a prior report. So if you made a mistake that you realized later, click the Correct Prior Report option. If it wasn't a mistake that happened and you were just— things change, your address changed, your ID changed, then choose the Update Prior Report report option, and then all you have to do is change that piece of information out of everything on the NSEN application. You won't have to fill out the whole thing, you'll just fill out the update, submit it, and then make sure you download a copy of that updated report for your records. And the last part is make sure you log out and close out your browser because you want to make sure that nobody has access to your information that you'll want to keep protected. All right, now we're ready for the next step. Now I know we talked about applying for FinCEN ID number for you as an individual, which we've already done if you were following along. The second FinCEN ID number I was talking about was your company's FinCEN ID number. Now, the way you apply for that is just by checking one box in the BOI report when you first fill out your BOI report. And that's all you have to do for that part, because as you fill out the BOI report, everything in that BOI report becomes a part of your company company's FinCEN ID number, if that makes sense. It'll be similar to what you just went through with the FinCEN ID number, except you just have to fill in the parts about your company because you already have your individual FinCEN ID number that you'll be able to use in place of the sections that would need your information. Okay, go to the website that you see here on the screen. The link is also available in the description for quick access. Be careful to make sure you're going to the specific government website. Website. Do not go to a third party's website accidentally because you Googled BOI and maybe somebody else's website popped up because they could be trying to skim your information. Make sure you go to the address that I show here because this is the official BOI filing website address. First thing you'll see is welcome to the BOI e-filing system. Click on File BOIR, which stands for File BOI Report. Then you'll be taken to the option to file the PDF version where you download the PDF. It's going to be an interactive PDF, so the form will automatically change according to the things that you choose on the application, and you'll even be able to attach a copy of your ID if you didn't get a FinCEN ID number. But if you got a FinCEN ID number, you won't have to worry about that part, and then you'll be able to upload this completed PDF into the system. The benefit of filling out the BOI report using the is number one, you can take your time if you think that you'll need the time. It's a very short report, doesn't take but a few minutes to fill out. But if you feel like you'll need time and you don't want to be kicked out of the website prematurely before you had a chance to fill everything out, you can take your time to fill out the PDF and save as you go. If you're one of those people that decided not to get a FinCEN ID number because you only have one company and one owner and you don't expect any changes anytime soon, and you don't feel like it's a real big deal to have to fill out everything all over again. The second benefit to the PDF option is that you'll have a copy of the completed PDF version, and when you have an update that you need to file, you literally can get a copy of that original PDF that you uploaded, edit what you put in that first one to update the information, and then upload the new copy. So you don't have to fill out quite as much, but it can get a little bit tricky, and I really just recommend the simplest way of filing the BOI is just go ahead and use the online e-file e-filing option versus the PDF option. I don't think you'll get timed out. The information it asks for is too simple. If you followed my instructions and got your FinCEN ID number, it's going to be even faster and even easier to complete the BOI report and to stay in compliance whenever there are any updates. So let's get started. I'm going to go through and give you the instructions specifically about the online e-filing option. So that's the second option that says Web Prepare and Submit BOIR. It'll take you to this page where it shows you 5 sections that you'll be completing. Now, again, don't get alarmed, super simple, won't take you but a couple of minutes to do this. First section is the filing information. They need to know what type of report are you filing. Is this your initial report? Are you trying to correct a prior report because you already filed a report and you need to correct it? Are you needing to update your prior report because there's been a change? Or do you need to report that you're newly exempt? I'm going to give instructions specifically for an initial report. So you would click A Initial Report here. The date should be pre-filled with the current date. Then you'll click Next. The next section is for the reporting company. The reporting company is talking about your company. I know it seems kind of confusing. It almost seems like you're talking in third person by referring to it as reporting company, but the reporting company is your company that we're going to provide the information for in this BOI report. So the first thing you see here is you have the option to request your FinCEN ID for your company. This is the part where I said go ahead and request this because you never know in the future if you're doing really well in business, you'll start creating different companies that might be owned by one of your companies, or your company might own multiple other companies in a certain way that helps you save money on taxes or provide the greatest benefit depending on your different goals. So I recommend you go ahead and get that because just like the FinCEN ID number, if this information needs to be updated, it's simpler to update it if you have a FinCEN ID number for your company, just like if you have an individual FinCEN ID number. So I would check the box for number 3, Request to Receive FinCEN ID. Then the next part asks you to fill in the reporting company legal name. That's going to be your company's legal name, whatever you filed with the Secretary of State. Your legal name needs to be filed here. Number 6 is asking for your DBA or your trade name. If you have an actual DBA or a trade name that you're using in conducting business for your company, then list that here. And if you have more than one, just click Add Alternate Name to add more DBAs or trade names. Then click Next. Next, they're going to need the tax ID number for your company. First, you're going to choose which type that you have, whether it's your EIN, your Social Security number, your ITIN, or your foreign tax ID number. Whichever one you have, if you have your EIN, great. If you don't have an EIN, use your Social and then on number 8, enter the actual Tax ID number, which will be your EIN number or your Social Security number. And then on number 9, choose which country or jurisdiction issued you this Tax ID number. Now, drop down will give you an option of different countries. Mark USA and click Next. Now they need your company's address. They need the street physical address where you conduct business. Don't overcomplicate the situation. Try is simplify and choose an address if you are an online business. If you handle any level of business at home, that might be the simplest answer to what address to use here. But if you have an actual street physical address where you actually conduct business, please list that here. Your secondary option is your home address if you do not have an actual physical business address that you can use here. Then click Next. Okay, now we're on the third tab, which is Company Applicant. And earlier I went over how if your company company was created before 2024, that means you created it in 2023 or any of the previous years before that, regardless of how old it is, if it was created before 2024, check the box for number 16 for Existing Reporting Company. Once you do that, it's going to gray out the whole section for the company applicant, and you will not have to provide this information. If your company was formed on January 1st, 2024 or afterwards, that means going forward, 2024, 2025, all that going forward, you cannot mark this box and you will have to provide the company applicant information. And as I mentioned before, it's the same information you'll provide for the beneficial owner. It's the person who actually submitted the paperwork, physical paperwork or online forms, whoever did the actual submitting the forms to create the company, that person is listed as the applicant. And then if somebody told them to set up the company, that person is also a company applicant, and you'll need to list both of them. They have to be real people, not companies, and you can have up to 2. You can— you must have at least 1. Again, it only applies to a company that was formed in 2024 or going forward. You have to list at least 1 company applicant, and that's the person who actually submitted the Form documents with the Secretary of State. For the company applicant, just like for the beneficial ownership, you can provide the FinCEN ID number for that person. If you do provide that FinCEN ID number, then you won't have to fill out that person's legal name, date of birth, address, ID type, upload a copy of their ID. You won't have to do any of that if they provide their FinCEN ID number. If they did not provide you a FinCEN ID number, they have to provide you you all of this information so that you can list them as your company applicant. Now, if you filed your own formation documents, then you would list your information here as the company applicant and fill in all your information. If you got your FinCEN ID number, then you can just enter your FinCEN ID number. You don't have to enter everything else. If you hire somebody to form your company with the Secretary of State and they don't have a FinCEN ID number and they opt to give you all their information to fill out the company applicant information, if they did it as a service, make sure you list their business address. The instructions from FinCEN was if somebody did it as a service, they need to provide their business address for the company applicant section. I'm pretty sure that's going to be another one of those checks and balances things where FinCEN is able to say, oh, well, you were reported as having a company and this is your company address, but you didn't file a BOI report. And you know, they're trying to catch criminals at the end of the day, and if you're failing to file, in their eyes, you could possibly be a criminal. Moving on, once you've filled out the company applicant information, you'll be filling out the beneficial ownership information. You have the option to fill in your FinCEN ID number here for yourself and any of the other owners. That's the easier way of doing things because imagine if you have partners and there's like 3 different partners, you would have to fill out all these pieces of information and upload IDs for each person. And then whenever their information changes, you'd need to go back in and do all of this over again. I mean, from beginning to end, every single line, you would have to fill it out again if you choose not to, or if any of the beneficial owners choose not to get a FinCEN ID number. So once again, I do highly recommend that you get your FinCEN ID number, which we went over earlier, and that way you can use that here, and then you'll be done with this section and you'll be ready to submit. You might notice that on number 35, it asks if you're going to be providing a parent or guardian's information instead of a minor child. There are some LLC corporations, whatnot, that have been formed under a child's name, and the child is the owner. FinCEN requires that the parent or the guardian provide their information instead of the minor's information here, and they would need to check this box if that's their situation. So if you do have a company that you up for your child and you're the parent, then you're going to need to mark off here that you're going to be providing your information instead. And then once that child is no longer a minor, then you're going to have to do an update BOI report that shows them as the owner, and this will effectively take your name off as the responsible party for filing the BOI report. Another thing to keep in mind is I know I said on the company applicant part, it has to be an individual usual person, like a real person's information listed there. However, on the beneficial ownership part, it does not have to be a person. If your company or somebody else's company owns your company, then that company's information would be listed here. And this is where earlier when you check the box to request a reporting company's FinCEN ID number, you would use that here, and that way you wouldn't have to fill in the company company's information for all these details for the beneficial ownership. That is a use case in which the reporting company or your company's FinCEN ID number comes in handy. Is if in the case you end up owning another company, or you end up owning, whether it's your own second company, you're, you're making your first company own your second company, or your company is going to own part of somebody else's company, kind of like a partnership deal. Whatever the case may be, these are the type types of scenarios where you would use the reporting company's FinCEN ID number, which would be your company's specific FinCEN ID number. It would be, in my example of the sack of information, all this information in this BOI report goes into this sack for your company, and you'd get issued that reporting company's FinCEN ID number and use that ID number to represent all this information versus having to fill in all that information over again. And the same thing applies to when you make your updates here on your BOI report for the original company, it'll automatically update that other company's information for the beneficial ownership. So say, for example, the address for the company changed in the future and it owns this other company as well. If you didn't use your reporting company's FinCEN ID number here with the new company, then you would end up having to update your BOI report for your company and for their company because the information didn't flow through because you didn't have the FinCEN ID number for your company. Once again, this is the benefit to FinCEN's ID numbers, whether it's the individual or the company one. I say get both of them, cover yourself, and that way it reduces the liability involved because the company is liable for updating their information. If they failed to file their updated information, they are held held responsible for that. There are civil and criminal penalties involved. If you have an individual FinCEN ID, say if you have a company and you have partners, if your partner moved and they forgot to give you their updated address and you entered their actual address on your BOI report, then you're going to be held responsible as the company because they didn't give you their updated address to file that updated BOI report. Versus if you make all the individual owners, all the individual partners get their own individual FinCEN ID number, then they'll be responsible for keeping their information updated. And when they update their information, it automatically flows back through into your report, and it keeps your company BOI report updated automatically without you having to lift a finger. And that's why I say get the FinCEN ID numbers, reduce your company liability, save yourself some time, and just make life overall easier. And it helps you protect your information. Alright, we're on the last tab. It's time to submit. There's a couple more pieces of information. The person who fills out your BOI report, whoever that is, whether it's yourself for your own company or you had somebody else help you do that, they need to fill out the email address and confirm that email address in the second box. They need to put their first name and their last name here. They need to click that they agree that they are certifying that— I'm gonna read this directly so that there's no misunderstanding about what you're agreeing to when you fill this BOI report out for yourself or for somebody else. It says, I certify that I am authorized to file this BOI-R, which is the BOI report, on behalf of the reporting company, your company. I further certify on behalf of the reporting company that the information contained in this BOI report is true, correct, and complete. Now, if you just ask somebody to do this for you, for your company, if they're not familiar with your company, it's not a great idea to have somebody file this for you and they're not familiar with your company to where they can certify that the information is true, correct, and complete. Those are 3 different categories of accuracy here. True, correct and complete. And for that reason, I am not providing the service directly, but I am providing a consulting option where you can contact me, or if you're one of my members, you can just ask me directly in the private community that we have on whatever your question is as you're filling out your BOI report or your FinCEN application or any of that stuff. So I don't mind giving guidance on it, but I wouldn't want to take the liability of just taking somebody's word for for who the beneficial owners are, especially when in the purpose of this report, FinCEN is wanting to know who are the real owners and controllers of the company. And there are times where people make executive decisions to exclude certain people from the ownership title. And in this case, it would be considered incorrectly filed or purposefully incorrectly filed and subject to the civil or criminal penalties. So you want to be careful about what executive decisions that you make whenever you choose who you do list or don't list as a beneficial owner, and make sure it's as true, correct, and complete as possible when you hit the I Agree checkbox. Okay, and of course, the little yellow box tells you that if you willfully fail to report your complete BOI information to FinCEN, or if you fail to update it or provide any false information, that it could result in civil or criminal penalties. So just try to do your best to provide accurate, true, correct, and complete information on this report, along with your FinCEN ID and keeping that updated. Check that I am human CAPTCHA and click Submit B-O-I-R. Next, you'll see this screen that says the submission is processing, and it'll show you a submission tracking ID number. You can copy and paste that into your Google docs for your own records for the tracking ID of this report that you just filed. Once it has finished processing, which only takes a few seconds, it doesn't take long, you'll see this screen for your submission status confirmation. And if you did it right, the status will show Filing Successful, and it invites you to download the transcript above. So few things to do here on this page. Number one, yes, definitely download that transcript because you need a copy for your records. You need to know what information you filed on your BOI report so that you can pay attention to if there are any updates in the future that you need to file an updated BOI report in order to stay compliant. The next thing you want to do is copy and paste that Reporting Company FinCEN ID number. They issued that instantly after you submitted it. It starts with a 2. You'll just copy and paste that again into Google Docs so that you have your official reporting company FinCEN ID number so that you can use it in the future as needed. If you're one of my BAM Boss members, you have access to the full version of the course. It goes into deeper explanation with examples and references that might give you more insight on any questions that you have. And there's also a PDF ebook version of everything that we talked about today, along with everything in the course that you'll get access to as a bonus inside the course. If you're not a BAM Boss member, you can always sign up to be one. If you decide that you're not ready to be a member, you can still purchase the course separately on my website at lomarispa.com. Alternatively, if you're a reader and like to be able to look up like keywords and searches and things like that to answer some of your questions regarding the things that we went over today, there's an ebook version of that. It's available at lomorisper.com under Shop, and you'll see it under the eBooks for the BOI report. Don't forget to click on the link in the description to download a copy of FinCEN's Small Entity Filing Guide. Just a couple more things I wanted to go over with you. Number 1, make sure you secure your FinCEN ID number for yourself, for your company, your login.gov credentials. Make sure you save it somewhere safe because these are government credentials that you've set up and that you now you have. You're going to need it in the future. I usually recommend cloud storage with a reputable company. I myself use Google Drive, which is part of Google One. Google One is the name of the actual cloud storage service that Google has. Google One is super affordable. It's only $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year for 100GB, which should be plenty of space to save all your important information whether you're creating different Google Docs to save your passwords and notes and things like that in Google Documents, which is just like Word, or you can save information in Google Sheets, which is like Excel spreadsheets. And then you also have the ability to upload important documents like the transcript of the BOI report that you filed and your FinCEN ID application that you filed. You'll be able to save all that information in Google Drive if you get Google One Cloud Storage, and here's the address where you would go to set up your Cloud Storage. One of the things you might struggle with is what information should you really save specifically, for example, in Google Docs. I've created a directory in my Google Drive with a Google Doc for each company that I deal with or each person that I deal with that has all the related information saved in that document. And so I would create one for FinCEN if I were you, and if you want to see an example of how I would save this information that we went over today. Once you filed, here's a copy of what I would save. As you can see, I would make notes on the login.gov information. If you're responsible with keeping up with more than one person's information, this is a good way to kind of organize things. For the login.gov, put the name of the person whose credentials that you're saving, assuming for yourself initially. So you put your name, the next line you'd put the email address that you to set up the Login.gov. Next line, you'd save the password. You want to write down your actual physical business address that you use today for your BOI report, your residential physical street address that you use. If you used Google Authenticator, you'll want to enter that you use Google Authenticator and on whose phone that you put that on and what the code was that they gave you. Remember, they gave you a QR code to scan, and then they gave you like an actual long string code. So you'll put that code here just for your records. And here you would also save your backup codes, those 10 codes that would have saved if you chose that option. You'll list your individual FinCEN ID number, which would start with a 3. Go ahead and write the date that you applied for it and was issued that FinCEN ID number. The reason why this is important is because once you've applied for the ID number, you are responsible for keeping it updated. They will not issue you a new ID number in the future. So once you have a FinCEN ID number, that's your ID number, and you want to keep up with your number. I suggest that you list which ID that you uploaded for your report and what the expiration date is, so that at a glance you can always jump back to this Google Doc where you save this information and see, oh, when this expires, that's when I gotta for sure go back in and update my BOI report. And then there's the the company information, the actual name that you listed, the actual DBA that you listed, because down the road, if you add on another DBA or if you remove one, you'll just be able to look at these notes and be able to check it real quick. And alternatively, you can also download a copy of the transcript of what you filed as well. But this is like a more condensed version of everything in one little place that makes it easier for you to see what you filed and potentially what needs to be updated over time. You want to list the address that you use here for the company. Once you filed your BOI report, you were assigned an ID number for the report itself, and you'll want to list that here, the date that you filed it so that you can keep up with when you filed your BOI report, and the tracking number, because ultimately this protects you in the future in case there's ever any questions of whether or not you correctly submitted your BOI report. You'll have a tracking number that they'll be able to reference to prove that you did actually file your report. And then the last thing here I listed was your actual reporting company's FinCEN ID number. That's your company FinCEN ID number. So you've got your individual one, you've got your reporting company one, and then you should be all set. It's always a good idea to set reminders for things that you know you're going to have to do in the future that would require you to file an updated BOI report or update your FinCEN FINCEN ID information. So I use Google Drive to reflect on what needs to be updated, and then things like your driver's license, it already has an expiration date. Once you've gotten your new driver's license, you'll need to go back and update your FINCEN ID information, and then it'll automatically update your BOI report for you. But you can set a reminder in Google Calendar, which is what I use, and set an alarm with that reminder in the Google Calendar so that it beeps on your phone when that date comes. And what I do is if it's something that doesn't have to be done on an exact date, I'll even list that it starts on one date in like at 12 o'clock every day for a week. It'll remind me, hey, you need to update your, uh, your FinCEN ID number. Hey, you need to update your— and a little alarm will go off just to remind you. If it's something that I might kind of hit the snooze on or dismiss for that day because I was too busy to get it done right away, well then the the next day it'll remind me again. So redundancy is not always a bad thing. It can be a good thing when you need it. So it just depends on how your brain works. If you're somebody who's great at setting a reminder and then doing it right away after you got your reminder, then you won't necessarily have to set up multiple days through which you get this reminder. But everybody's different. So there's certain things when I know it's not a specific date that something has to be done, and I've got lots of different reminders you know, all the different tax deadlines and stuff like that. This is just another one of those responsibilities that we have to add into the mix. And so I've already set my reminder that once my driver's license expires or before it expires, when I imagine I would get it renewed, that that's around the same time, you know, just setting a reminder for renewing the license and then setting another reminder for updating FinCEN and just making sure that they get done in a good time span that that keeps you in compliance because you have 30 days to update your FinCEN ID or BOI reports. So these reminders are important. Make sure you set it for yourself and know how you function and set the correct reminders in place so that you can make sure that you get it done on time. Another tip I'd offer for keeping up with updates that you might need to do is you might want to start like a Google document that has to do with updating your address when you you move. You might want to create a Google Doc and title it "Update Address When Moving," and then in that Google Doc, you would list the different companies that you would need to update your address with. Like the DMV would need to know when you move. FinCEN would like to know when you move because that's required. The bank would probably want to know when you move. There's different places, different companies that you do business with, the post office, whatever it might be. It's easier that as you conduct business, if there's certain companies that you deal with that they would need to know when your address updates, that you go ahead and just start making a list and then keep adding to the list as you go. And that way, when you do move, all you got to do is hop into that Google Doc, take a look at all the companies that you need to update your information with, and it'll make it easier for you to check each one off and not forget anybody that really needs that update that will keep you in compliance. I know I said it earlier, but I'm going to say it one more time. Please watch out for scammers. I have been reading and hearing about scammers trying to pretend like they are a FinCEN or pretend like they're a reputable company that wants to file your BOI report for you, and then they acquire all this personal information from people and are able to use it. However criminals use it, I, I don't know. You don't want to give a copy of your ID to somebody who's a scammer, so just be careful if somebody calls you, especially if they call and try to threaten or scare you about the civil and criminal penalties involved with not filing and making it seem like the BOI is so hard to do. Because clearly we went over it today. It is super simple. It's just a few steps and a few things that you have to keep in mind when you're filing. So just watch out for the scammers because their normal tactic is to trick you into getting your information. I hope all of this was helpful. I want to thank you for watching. I'd like to invite you to sign up to be one of my Bound Boss members. There's a link in the description below. That'll give you more information about what the membership is and what you get for the membership. I invite you to check it out. It's very useful, and it's definitely cheaper than having to hire a business consultant or tax professional or whatever the question you might have as you're conducting business. It's easier to ask me as you're living life and going through your day-to-day business in our private community or during our monthly calls where you're able to ask me over the video call, what your questions are. BAM Boss membership has several benefits. You get access to all my courses, free access. You don't have to pay a dime for it. As long as you're a member, you get access to it and it's super useful. You are able to purchase the courses à la carte if you want, where you just are interested in one. You can always do that on my website. You can check everything out at lomarisper.com. And I want to thank you for trusting me with guiding you through the process.