FinCen BOI tried to tried to file for myself

[Jim-from-Ohio]

tried twice.. both times did not go through.. error message had something to do with the drivers license that I uploaded.. first time I had my drivers license saved as two words, drivers license.. looked up the help for that line and said the attachment file name cannot containt spaces.  changed the name of the attachment to driverslicense.  resubmitted.. still would not go through.  

[PATAX]

wow...if this isnt easy for cpas, what will happen when business owners try to file for themselves? didn't they have all this time to make it user friendly? smh.

[Jim-from-Ohio]

no help phone number.. i tried a third time. this time i tried to upload the pdf version of the application.. got rejected again. this time with an error message that really was not helpful at all:

Submission Failure

Submission Tracking ID: BOIR240114y65a3e99f1

Uh-oh! We were unable to process your submission. Please try resubmitting.

If you continue to receive this message, please contact the FinCEN Contact Center (fincen.gov/contact) for assistance. (Error code: SF108)

Go back to the submission page

[Jim-from-Ohio]

found a help contact page: https://fincen.gov/contact

I sent them a message.. I then called them.. you know.. via phone.. to a number that they list, 800.767.7825 and i got a message referring me to a webpage and a message how they cannot respond to phone calls at this time!

[PATAX]

@Jim-from-Ohio its Sunday, they probably not there.

[George4Tacks]

Whoever said "Accountants Don't Have FUN!"

[BobKamman]

Is your DL a jpg or pdf?  Or some other format?  Do they say what they accept?

[rbynaker]

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@Jim-from-Ohio wrote:

Uh-oh! We were unable to process your submission. Please try resubmitting.

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Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Yet that seems to be the only way to deal with these government websites.  In my experience, if something doesn't work on the weekend, it's probably not going to get fixed until after someone shows up for work on Monday.  Or maybe Tuesday if Monday is a holiday...

[Jim-from-Ohio]

 An attachment to a BOIR cannot be larger than four (4) megabytes of data and must be in one of the following formats: JPG/JPEG, PNG, or PDF. Only one (1) attachment file may be added per company applicant. Attachment file names should not contain spaces, and can only contain letters, numbers, or the following characters !@#$%()_-=+[]|;~

[Jim-from-Ohio]

is 156 KB smaller than 4 megabytes?

[PATAX]

@Jim-from-Ohio looks like it. I just checked: one megabyte equals 1,000 kilobytes.

[itonewbie]

@Jim-from-Ohio  FinCEN's PDF files are not the most user friendly because of their limitations of special characters.

Did you use the File Online BOIR option, which uses an online form that should be the more streamlined than a PDF?

If you used the File PDF BOIR option, did you hit the Validate button before uploading the PDF?  The validation will help you weed out all the illegal characters and correct various errors that could prevent the file from being accepted (at least for discretionary e-filing of FBAR).

[Jim-from-Ohio]

i tried both.. and on the pdf option i did click validate first. 

[IRonMaN]

I was going to give ours a try this morning.  Something tells me I might want to wait a bit longer.

[PATAX]

@IRonMaN maybe wait until November or December. On second thought, maybe not, since many people will be trying to file at that time and I could imagine how many phone calls they're going to be getting.

[IRonMaN]

I was going to go exploring just to get an idea as to what kind of adventure it would or wouldn't be for clients.

[rbynaker]

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@IRonMaN wrote:

I was going to give ours a try this morning.  Something tells me I might want to wait a bit longer.

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You should give it a try.  Then Jim will know if the problem is with the site or on his end.

If you have more than one entity you might want to apply for a FinCEN ID first.  Then you can use that ID on each application and not have to keep attaching photo IDs to every report.

One issue though, when you retire and close down your business there seems to be no mechanism in place to tell that to FinCEN.  So then if you have a FinCEN ID for yourself do you have to keep updating it when you move even if it's not used on any active entity reports?  <shrug>  Maybe.  It doesn't look like they've thought through the long-term implications of this nonsense.

[itonewbie]

Read that too, Rick.  Obviously, that part can wait... (or so they think)

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M. 6. Is there any way to deactivate an individual’s FinCEN identifier that is no longer in use so that the individual no longer has to update the information associated with it?

FinCEN is actively assessing options to allow individuals to deactivate a FinCEN identifier so that they do not need to update the underlying personal information on an ongoing basis. FinCEN will provide additional guidance on this functionality upon completion of that process.

[Issued September 29, 2023]

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https://www.fincen.gov/boi-faqs#M_6

[Jim-from-Ohio]

Success! I got it to go through.. if interested this is what I did.  Originally on both the online submission and the pdf upload (two different methods) I was getting an error message.  On the first method that I tried, the onlihe method the error mentioned something wrong with the drivers license attachment.  

On the second method I tried, the error message just gave me some meaningless error code.  

So regarding the first method error code I had originally uploaded a jpeg of the front of my drivers license.  I thought well maybe I will upload a pdf of both the front and back of my drivers license (as one pdf) with the onlne method.. still got the atttachment error. problem with the attachment.

So I thought to give it another shot under method two.. the pdf upload method.. they wanted my drivers license to be uploaded twice, though I think a totally different proof of identification would work but I went with the new pdf drivers license that I just created. Got an error message on the second drivers license upload.. said you cannot use the same file name for the 2nd upload.. So I created a new pdf of my drivers license of both sides.. called it driverslicense2.   So validated my submission.. submitted it.. and success! thought this may help if others were getting similar errors. 

[PATAX]

Thanks for sharing that information with us Jim. It looks like the Boi monster is living up to my expectations. Just imagine when clients try to do this.

[rbynaker]

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@itonewbie wrote:

Read that too, Rick.  Obviously, that part can wait... (or so they think)

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Yeah.  "Submit your information now, and we'll decide later what the consequences might be."

You've reached the outer limits, please stand by.

[Frustrated-in-IL]

I have been following this thread closely, not for the outcome but for the time involved for Jim to get this to work. I do believe Jim should send the federal government a bill for his time. By my calculations, in the amount of time Jim spent on this he could have prepared 72 tax returns!

[CY3800]

I thought the existing businesses can wait until 2025 to file.  Am I correct?

[itonewbie]

@CY3800 Jan 1, 2025 to be exact.

https://www.fincen.gov/boi-faqs#B_2