The fine print: This post is compliance commentary, not legal advice, and no substitute for your own counsel or the New York Department of State’s filing guidance. Beneficial ownership rules have shifted more than once while you weren’t looking.
On August 11, 2026, FinCEN permanently ended beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) for U.S. companies and U.S. persons. And it said it would delete the domestic person data it had already collected.
New York enacted its LLC Transparency Act (NY LLCTA) in December 2023, amended it in March 2024, and it became effective on January 1, 2026. The catch: the NY LLCTA defines its core terms (“reporting company,” “exempt company,” “beneficial owner”) by cross-reference to the CTA and FinCEN’s implementing regulations. Albany didn’t write its own definitions; it borrowed Washington’s.
Why credit unions were never the ones filing and what still applies
Two things worth separating, because they’re easy to conflate.
First, credit unions were never CTA reporting companies. You sit among the statute’s exemptions, alongside banks and other regulated depositories. The rollback doesn’t change your institution’s filing posture, because you never had one.
The guidance is short, and it’s careful to frame itself as a reminder of “existing obligations” rather than a new rule. But read past the throat clearing and it’s asking for something specific: treat a borrower’s work authorization as a credit risk variable. It organizes the ask around five underwriting considerations.
Second, the CTA reporting regime is not the same thing as your customer due diligence (CDD) obligations. Since 2018, FinCEN’s CDD Rule has required you to identify and verify the beneficial owners of your legal entity members at account opening. That rule is still on the books. The CTA was supposed to eventually streamline it: Congress told FinCEN to reconcile the two so institutions could lean on the federal registry. With the registry now gutted for domestic entities, that promised reconciliation is in limbo. This is part of a bigger FinCEN reregulation push including a broad AML/CFT program reform proposal and the February 2026 CDD exceptive relief. Until something final lands, collect beneficial ownership information at account opening exactly as you did last month. The federal BOI funeral is not a CDD holiday.
So, what does this mean for New York credit unions and their LLC members? I’m glad you asked!
When FinCEN narrowed the federal rule to foreign-formed entities, New York’s reach narrowed in lockstep. Today the LLCTA covers only LLCs formed under the law of a foreign country and authorized to do business in New York, the same universe the feds still cover, minus the corporations and other entities the CTA reaches but the LLCTA never did.
Because, of course there’s a New York twist
For the foreign LLCs still in scope, New York’s version is not a carbon copy of the federal filing. Four real divergences:
- It recurs. The CTA was file once, update on change. New York requires an initial and annual filing.
- It won’t take a shortcut. New York doesn’t accept FinCEN identifiers, so owners must hand the state raw passport or license numbers: a small privacy step backward from the federal approach.
- Exempt still means “file something.” Federally, an exempt entity files nothing. Under the LLCTA, an exempt foreign-formed LLC must file an initial and annual attestation of exemption.
- Enforcement. Miss a filing and the New York Department of State marks the business past due, then delinquent; the Attorney General can assess up to $500 a day, suspend the entity from doing business, and move to dissolve it. That machinery always existed.
The real issue is political, not textual
New York stayed aligned with the federal floor by a veto, not by design. The Legislature passed a bill to decouple the LLCTA from the CTA and preserve its original, all LLC reach. Governor Hochul vetoed it because she didn’t want New York businesses carrying a heavier compliance load than the federal baseline. And when FinCEN made the rollback permanent on August 11, it locked that alignment onto something durable rather than the provisional interim rule it had been resting on.
But a veto is not a repeal of the underlying intent. New York has already demonstrated the legislative will to decouple once. The state is one session and one signature away from snapping the LLCTA’s scope back to every New York LLC. The coupling is contingent, and that contingency is the thing to watch.
So what should a New York credit union actually do?
For most of your members, nothing changed on August 11. The population touched by the LLCTA today is narrow: foreign-formed LLCs authorized to do business in New York. But narrow isn’t zero, and four things are worth holding onto:
- If a business member is a foreign-formed LLC, don’t let “the CTA is dead” become “so I can ignore New York.” They can’t, and the deadline for pre-2026 entities is December 31, 2026. A member who reads “the CTA is dead” and assumes New York followed suit could miss a filing and get suspended.
- Keep your own member due diligence separate. The CTA rollback doesn’t touch what you collect on legal entity members at account opening under CDD. That obligation is unchanged.
- The decoupling fight isn’t settled. A shift in Albany’s politics or Washington’s posture could change that.
- It’s a member education opening. Your small business members are getting contradictory signals: federal relief on one hand, a state filing portal on the other. A credit union that can say, accurately, “your federal obligation is gone, your New York one might not be” is doing exactly the trusted advisor work member owned institutions are built for.
Until Next Time
From the big picture to the fine print, we’ve got you covered. Thanks for reading, and CU in the next post.