No need to check the date of this newsletter. You haven’t gone back in time. Sometimes the government is just really (really) slow to act, and that’s what happened here. More than two years after Treasury began accepting beneficial ownership information reports, FinCEN has finalized a rule that exempts U.S. companies and U.S. persons from the Corporate Transparency Act’s reporting requirements, even though Congress has not repealed the law.

The rule formalizes the rollback announced in March 2025, effectively shelving the CTA for domestic businesses. That’s a significant reversal for a regime that originally applied to an estimated 32 million companies in its first year and imposed steep penalties for willful noncompliance.

The CTA, enacted in 2021 to combat the use of anonymous shell companies, now primarily applies to foreign entities registered to do business in the United States, which must continue reporting information about foreign beneficial owners. FinCEN also says it will delete information from its BOI database about individuals it reasonably believes are U.S. persons. For domestic companies, meanwhile, there is nothing further to file: businesses that previously submitted BOI reports or obtained FinCEN identifiers are not required to update or correct that information.

(Did I mention that Congress hasn’t repealed the law?)

Treasury also issued new guidance that applies to the SECURE 2.0 Act, which (checks notes) was signed into law in 2022. Treasury and the IRS are working to simplify retirement-plan rollovers with Notice 2026-49, which provides four optional sample forms and a standardized five-step process for direct rollovers between employer plans or between a plan and an IRA.

The guidance doesn’t change the tax rules or apply to IRA-to-IRA transfers, but it encourages plans to coordinate directly and transfer funds electronically, reducing reliance on paper checks that participants must forward themselves. The forms aren’t mandatory and don’t yet provide a safe harbor, though Treasury and the IRS are considering additional guidance that could further standardize and automate the rollover process.

Of course, moving your retirement money without triggering a tax bill is one thing. Selling an investment for a profit is another—which brings us to capital gains.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ latest sale could trigger a billion-dollar tax bill. A group led by Josh Kushner (yes, the same Kushner who was recently involved in ill-fated efforts to invest in the World Cup) and former Disney CEO Bob Iger agreed to buy the team for a reported $12.5 billion valuation, less than a year after Mark Walter’s group acquired majority control at a $10 billion valuation. That would leave Walter’s group with roughly $3 billion in gains across the two tranches of its 71% stake, with about $1.89 billion attributable to a 27% stake acquired in 2021 and another $1.1 billion to the 44% stake acquired in October 2025.

The timing of the sale could make a significant difference. The older stake, which qualifies for long-term capital gain treatment, could generate about $701 million in federal and California taxes. If the newer 44% stake is held for more than a year before the transaction closes, it could result in another $408 million in taxes. If it is sold before the one-year mark, the........

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