US Ends Beneficial Ownership Reporting, CIPC Does Not
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Your client reads that America has scrapped beneficial ownership reporting and deleted the data. He phones to ask when CIPC does the same. The short answer is that CIPC is doing the opposite, and if he sells into the United States he is now the one still filing.
FinCEN Removed Beneficial Ownership Reporting
The US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule permanently removing the requirement for US companies and US persons to report beneficial ownership information under the Corporate Transparency Act. It takes effect on publication in the Federal Register. FinCEN will also delete beneficial ownership information already reported by US persons from its database, including information it reasonably believes relates to a US person because it is linked to a US passport or driver's licence.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the change a “victory for common sense and small business”.
This did not come out of nowhere. Enforcement against domestic companies was already suspended by an interim final rule in March 2025, after a run of court challenges and heavy industry lobbying, including from the AICPA. The final rule makes that permanent and goes further: US person company applicants no longer get reported, US persons holding FinCEN IDs no longer have to update them, and foreign pooled investment vehicles registered in the US are exempt from reporting a US person in control.
Read the exemption carefully
There is one exemption: foreign entities that are reporting companies must still report beneficial ownership information for foreign individuals.
Work out what that means for a South African client. A company incorporated in South Africa that has registered to do business in a US state is a foreign reporting company. Its beneficial owners are South Africans. South Africans are the foreign individuals FinCEN still wants to see.
So the relief went to US persons. If you act for an exporter, an e-commerce seller with a US warehousing entity, or a services firm that registered in Delaware to invoice American clients, nothing was lifted from your desk. The obligation narrowed onto exactly your client.
Nothing has moved at home
CIPC has been running beneficial ownership filing as a compulsory requirement since 24 May 2023. Filing is required within 10 business days of a change in beneficial ownership, and the system checks for an up-to-date declaration before an annual return will go through. CIPC has published lists of non-compliant entities, issued compliance notices and administrative fines, and moved to deregister companies that ignore both.
The timing also matters. South Africa came off the FATF grey list on 24 October 2025 after clearing 22 action items, several of which were about beneficial ownership transparency. The next review cycle starts from late 2026. No regulator in this country is going to loosen a beneficial ownership rule eighteen months after using it to get delisted, whatever Washington does. We made that point in SA is Off the Greylist: What Does the Big News Mean?.
Three things to do this week
Identify every client with a US-registered entity and confirm whether it is a foreign reporting company. If it is, the filing obligation is live and the beneficial owners to be reported are the South African ones.
Second, kill the assumption before it spreads. Business owners read international headlines and hear "beneficial ownership is over". A client who skips a CIPC filing on that basis loses the ability to transact with CIPC and risks deregistration.
Third, put the affected or non-affected test on file for each company client, because that classification drives everything else. Affected or Not? Cracking the Code on CIPC's Beneficial Ownership Filing sets out the questions.
There is a wider point for practices. Two jurisdictions have just moved in opposite directions on the same rule, and clients trading in both now need someone who can hold both sets of facts. That is not admin. That is advisory work, and it is priced accordingly.
Source Article: Accounting Today
