The manager of the vintage mall just sent email that LLCs need to submit a BOI

[Marthe48]

I have a small booth in this vintage mall. I have been downsizing using the booth. When I started up, I didn't create an LLC or get a dealer's license. There was no requirement to fill out tax forms. I think the manager said they'd collect (sales?) taxes and file the paperwork.

I got an email from the manager today that any of us with an LLC needs to file a BOI. Does BOI stand for Beneficial Ownership Information form? I wanted to be sure I'm looking for information about whatever the manager is talking about. The manager said in the email not to ask them, because they don't know.

I don't pay any taxes on what I sell, because I'm 72 and getting SS. I thought I could make a certain amount without getting taxed, and then unlimited when I got to be a certain age. If I owed taxes, I would pay them, but I thought I was following the guidelines.

If I can find out what the BOI is, I can look for information about any action I should take.

As always, many thanks!

[FBaggins]

1. If you aren't an LLC then you shouldn't need one

It’s just a form identifying the owners of the LLC. If you’re doing business under your own name - that isn’t an issue.

Now… doing business under your own name has other risks. But that’s a different conversation

[Marthe48]

6. I talked to another vendor awhile back

They were also set up in the mall I'm in. She said she would've preferred to be in another vintage mall on the other side of town, but they want the vendors to fill out a 1099 (I think). I wouldn't have minded, but I was relieved that I didn't have to get into the paperwork and didn't check on details. Maybe I should.

Thanks for your comments!

[IbogaProject]

2. Required report to the fed dept of treasury

Their financial crimes division. https://fincen.gov/boi Due by end of the year, and must be updated anytime anyone in that business or the business itself moves addresses. Might get declared unconstitutional but not before the report it due. Draconian fines for "non-compliance".

[getagrip_already]

3. I think you are confusing ss with the irs....

To the ssa, if you have elected to receive ss payments early, any income earned up to your full retirement age (around 67 depending on birthdate), can reduce your social security payouts. If you started collecting ss after full retirement age, it doesnt matter.

Thats is irrelevant to the irs and state dor however. To them, everything you make is income. Even if you are selling things you have owned for 50 years. They probably want records of sales as a retailer. Your age isnt going to get you a free pass to no taxes

[Marthe48]

8. After my husband passed away

I continued filling out the federal income tax forms, and after all of the deductions, didn't make enough to submit a return. After a few years, I stopped filling in the forms because nothing changed. I dount that what I get from selling my stuff is going to swell my annual income, but I will fill in a form this year and see if I need to submit it.

I wouldn't dodge paying taxes on purpose

[getagrip_already]

12. Just fyi, you always need to file a return....

Even if you dont make any money.

Its just a thing. You can get a huge fine for not filing, even if you dont owe them anything.

And besides, you might still qualify or a return via an earned income tax credit.

[Beartracks]

4. I have no idea, and I'm sure you already googled for "boi." But I found FinCEN's website.

https://fincen.gov/boi

On their FAQ page https://fincen.gov/boi-faqs, questions C.1 and C.6 offer some good info. It doesn't sound like every LLC or sole prop necessarily needs to report.

Their home page, by the way, notes an alert that there have been fraudulent attempts to solicit information from individuals and entities who may be subject to reporting requirements -- so I hope your mall manager didn't just get some random letter and pass it along assuming it was true.

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[Mike 03]

5. Yeah, I learned about this the Friday before the election

We have a small LLC and had to comply, but there are a lot of exceptions. Be sure to check the exceptions to see if you have to register.

This is happening because of the passage of a transparency law (I think it passed in 2021) but despite the hard deadline of Jan 1 2025 I'm not sure how many people know about this.

The government simply wants to know that there are real people (beneficial owners) behind these LLCs because there are so many of them that are fake shell companies and what not that are used for money laundering and illicit purposes.

You can either file it on line (in real time) or if you have a particular type of Adobe Acrobat program you can fill it out as a PDF at your leisure and submit it after you have all the information ready to go.

They want to know basic information like an LLC's EIN #, address and addresses of the Beneficial Owners, and the names, D.O.B. and addresses of the beneficial owners (persons with a 25% or greater interest/share in the company).

The hardest part for me, because I'm technologically challenged, is they want photographs of one official document for each BO. In our case, we used our state issued driver's licenses. You may be very adept at this, but I barely knew what I was doing. So, our LLC had 4 beneficial owners. We took photos of our drivers licenses, edited them down in file size so they would be acceptable to the form, and uploaded them for each BO.

I'd say it probably took me a little over an hour, but I sort of prepped by familiarizing myself with the data they wanted and getting everything together in advance. The fewer Beneficial Owners you have, the less time this process will take.

But you can study the form in advance on the website and see if you have all the info or whether you need to dig around to find some of it (like your EIN number, DL numbers or DOBs of your Beneficial Owners, for example).

I really do wish you luck. It's not cool that so many of us are just finding out about this now. Our lawyer told us he thought they might extend the deadline because so many people are just finding out about it now and are panicking--and with the holidays coming up and so forth.

One word of caution: Be sure to go to the actual government website. There are a bunch of fly by night websites and lawyers charging people to do something that is free. Most of them are honest in the sense that they will file your BOI with the government after you fill it out on their websites but they charge various fees, from the high hundreds to the $350 range as a filing fee. It takes just the same amount of time to fill the official government form out for yourself and the government does not charge you anything. (Also the government website is quite good).

After you file it, you receive an onscreen message telling you that your submission was successful. You will be assigned a FinCen number and you can download a transcript of your submission so you have proof you complied by the deadline. They will also send you a confirmation by email.

I really hope this helps you and maybe others. It is a little bit anxiety-provoking, but I think when most people see the form they will not find anything too surprising.

LLCs and companies created before January of 2024 do not have to fill out Part II, asking for information about the original applicant. (There are pretty good instructions on the form).

I hope I haven't forgotten anything important.

Here's the official link:
https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/

[Marthe48]

7. Thanks for explaining it so well

I found the fincen.gov page when I started checking. Before I got into it, I wanted to be sure I was looking at the right BOI.
I'm a little worried that I'm totally illegal, because I didn't establish my booth as a business. We had a shop 40 years ago and did it all correctly for that. My partner got tired of the work, so we didn't renew at the end of that last year we had it.

I asked some questions of the manager of this vntage mall when I rented the space, but they didn't seem to think I needed to get other paperwork submitted. If I have to do anything, I think I can take care of it on my own.

It is a shame that this nformation is passed along right before the holidays. I'm sure I'll find time to see what, if anything, I need to do, but I was not expecting to do accounting 1.0 or 2.0!

Thanks again!

[Mike 03]

9. Maybe your booth is governed by less

stringent rules, especially since (I think you wrote) the manager of the mall seems to have assumed certain responsibilities and obligations for the vendors like yourself.

From what I can tell, this process is NOT about trying to intimidate or harass or obtain taxes from people who run small businesses. It really is an attempt to locate fake businesses that are "businesses in name only" and have no actual owners and no legitimate purpose--the kind of bogus or suspicious LLCs that are created by the millions in states like Delaware and Nevada. They also are probably looking for individuals who have hundreds or thousands of LLCs whose purpose is mysterious.

I mean, that is how I understand it. So please don't be worried about that. The tax aspect really falls to the IRS. The Financial Crimes unit is just looking for individuals who create LLCs in bad faith for some duplicitous reasons.

I hope everything goes okay.

Please keep us all posted on how it goes, or what you learn.

[Marthe48]

10. I thought the wording in fincen seemed reassuring

in that they just want to know who's involved in the LLC. I saw that the BOI only has to be filed once, unless information has to be updated.

I'll let you know what happens. It'll be a good way for me to be sure I follow up

[Mike 03]

11. One last thing that might set peoples minds at ease:

There are ZERO questions on the BOI filing about an LLC's finances.

No questions regarding annual revenues, profits, holdings, wages, disbursements, distributions, taxes, salaries, etc...