FinCEN Form 104 Currency Transaction Report: Filing and Exemptions

FinCEN Form 104, the paper Currency Transaction Report, has not been accepted since March 31, 2013.¹ If you are searching for Form 104, you are looking for the current CTR, which every bank, credit union, money services business, and casino files electronically through the BSA E-Filing System whenever a customer’s cash transactions cross $10,000 in a single business day.² The threshold, the identification rules, and the 15-day filing deadline all carried over unchanged. What follows is how the current form works.

When You Have to File

A CTR is required for any deposit, withdrawal, currency exchange, or other payment or transfer involving more than $10,000 in currency.² “Currency” means physical coins and paper money, U.S. or foreign. Checks, wire transfers, and card payments do not count because they already leave a traceable record.

Several smaller cash transactions on the same business day have to be aggregated if the institution knows they are by or on behalf of the same person. The rule applies whether the activity happens at one branch or across several. Cash left in a night drop or deposited over a weekend counts as received on the next business day.³

For foreign currency, convert to U.S. dollars at the business day’s exchange rate and apply the $10,000 test against the converted amount.⁴ Treasury publishes quarterly reporting rates and issues amendments when market rates move more than 10% from the published figure.⁵

Information You Need Before Filing

Identifying information must be collected and verified before the transaction is completed, not reconstructed later. The regulation requires the name and address of the person presenting the transaction, together with the identity, account number, and Social Security or taxpayer identification number of anyone on whose behalf the transaction is being conducted.⁶

Verification means looking at an actual document. Notations like “known customer” or “signature card on file” are specifically prohibited. A driver’s license or credit card works for U.S. residents. For a non-resident or alien, the acceptable documents are a passport, alien identification card, or another official document showing nationality or residence.⁶ The number from that document goes on the report itself.

When more than one person is involved, such as two joint account holders making a single withdrawal, check the “Multiple persons” box in Part I and complete the additional sections for each person conducting or benefiting from the transaction.⁷ If the person at the counter is acting for a business or another individual, the legal name, EIN, and address of that entity also go on the report.

How to File Through the BSA E-Filing System

All CTRs are filed electronically at bsaefiling.fincen.gov.⁸ Paper is no longer accepted. There are two filing methods.

Discrete filing means a compliance officer logs into the website and keys in each CTR through an on-screen form. The filing date is recorded automatically when the filer signs. This fits institutions with low CTR volume.

Batch filing means the institution’s own system produces an XML file containing multiple CTRs and transmits it server-to-server through FinCEN’s Secure Data Transfer Mode. The process can be automated. The filing date for a batch is the date it is transmitted to the BSA E-Filing System.

The deadline is 15 calendar days after the day of the reportable transaction.⁹ After submission, the system returns a 14-digit BSA Identifier and an electronic acknowledgment. Keep both. You will need the BSA ID to correct or amend the report later.

Correcting or Amending a Filed CTR

File a corrected report when you find an error in what was submitted. File an amended report when you learn additional facts about the transaction after the original filing. Either way, check box 1b for “Correct/amend prior report” and enter the BSA Identifier from the original. The replacement must be completed in full, not just the fields that changed.¹⁰ Corrections can go through either the discrete form or a batch submission.

Record Retention

Keep a copy of every filed CTR, with supporting documentation, for at least five years from the filing date.¹¹ Records may be stored in original form, on microfilm, or electronically, as long as they can be produced within a reasonable time.¹²

Customers You Can Exempt From CTR Filing

Not every large cash transaction has to be reported. Certain low-risk customers can be exempted, in two tiers.

Phase I Exempt Persons

These customers are automatically eligible, with no Designation of Exempt Person (DOEP) filing or annual review required:¹³

Other domestic depository institutions, to the extent of their U.S. operations.
Federal, state, or local government agencies, departments, or authorities, including entities exercising governmental authority.
Companies whose common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE American, or the NASDAQ National Market, along with subsidiaries at least 51% owned by a listed entity.

Phase II Exempt Persons

Two more categories can qualify, but the bank has to designate them and keep the status under review.

A non-listed business qualifies if it has held a transaction account at the bank for at least two months (or less, if a risk-based assessment supports a legitimate business reason for frequent large cash transactions), regularly conducts currency transactions above $10,000, and gets no more than 50% of gross revenue from ineligible activities.¹³ Payroll customers that regularly withdraw large amounts of currency to meet payroll qualify under similar criteria.

Before granting a Phase II exemption, confirm the customer has conducted at least five reportable currency transactions within the prior year.¹³ Then file a one-time DOEP through the BSA E-Filing System within 30 calendar days after the first transaction you want to exempt.¹⁴

Businesses That Cannot Be Exempted

A business cannot qualify as a non-listed exempt person if it is primarily engaged in any of these: acting as a financial institution or an agent of one, motor vehicle sales, law practice, accounting, medicine, auctioneering, ship or aircraft chartering, gaming other than licensed parimutuel betting at racetracks, investment advisory or investment banking services, real estate brokerage, pawn brokerage, title insurance and real estate closings, or trade union activities.¹⁵ A business that touches one of these areas but gets more than half its gross revenue from other activities can still qualify.

Annual Review

Exemptions are not permanent. At least once a year, review every Phase II exempt person, along with listed companies and their subsidiaries, to confirm they still meet the criteria. The review must include a check of how the bank’s transaction monitoring system is treating the exempt customer’s accounts.¹⁵ When a customer no longer qualifies, revoke the designation and resume filing CTRs.

Structuring: What to Watch For

Structuring is deliberately breaking a large cash transaction into smaller amounts to stay under the $10,000 reporting threshold. It is a federal crime whether or not the underlying money is legitimate; the act of arranging the transactions to evade reporting is independently illegal.¹⁶

A conviction carries up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. If the structuring involved more than $100,000 over 12 months or occurred as part of another federal crime, both the prison term and the fine double.¹⁶¹⁷ Treasury can also impose a civil penalty equal to the amount of currency involved; $80,000 in structured deposits can draw an $80,000 penalty.¹⁸

A customer does not have to announce an intent to evade for structuring to apply. Repeated $9,500 deposits, or questions about how much cash can be deposited “without paperwork,” are the patterns compliance staff are trained to escalate.

CTR vs. Suspicious Activity Report

These are different obligations. A CTR is mechanical: cash over $10,000 means you file, no judgment involved. A Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) is judgment-based, filed when the institution knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect that a transaction of $5,000 or more involves illegal funds, is designed to evade BSA requirements, or has no apparent lawful purpose.¹⁹ They can overlap: a $15,000 cash deposit that also looks suspicious gets both a CTR and a SAR. A CTR is a routine filing you can acknowledge to the customer; federal law forbids telling anyone involved in a transaction that a SAR has been filed.

1
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Filing FinCEN’s New Currency Transaction Report and Suspicious Activity Report
2
eCFR. 31 CFR 1010.311 – Filing Obligations for Reports of Transactions in Currency
3
eCFR. 31 CFR 1010.313 – Aggregation
4
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Frequently Asked Questions Concerning Completion of Part II of FinCEN Form 104, Currency Transaction Report
5
U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data. Treasury Reporting Rates of Exchange
6
eCFR. 31 CFR 1010.312 – Identification Required
7
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Currency Transaction Report (FinCEN Form 104)
8
BSA E-Filing System. BSA E-Filing System
9
eCFR. 31 CFR 1010.306 – Filing of Reports
10
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Instructions for Backfiling and Amending Currency Transaction Reports
11
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. A Quick Reference Guide for Money Services Businesses
12
FFIEC BSA/AML InfoBase. Appendix P – BSA Record Retention Requirements
13
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Guidance on Determining Eligibility for Exemption from Currency Transaction Reporting Requirements
14
FFIEC BSA/AML InfoBase. FFIEC BSA/AML Assessing Compliance with BSA Regulatory Requirements – Transactions of Exempt Persons
15
eCFR. 31 CFR 1020.315 – Transactions of Exempt Persons
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 31 US Code 5324 – Structuring Transactions to Evade Reporting Requirement Prohibited
17
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 3571 – Sentence of Fine
18
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 31 USC 5321 – Civil Penalties
19
eCFR. 31 CFR 1020.320 – Reports by Banks of Suspicious Transactions