Farmers, ranchers and the owners of agribusinesses need to understand the Corporate Transparency Act, and how this piece of legislation could be used to ruin them.

It is intended to detect money laundering.

Congress inserted the act into the 2021 defense budget, but the law didn’t go into effect until this year. The law applies to corporations with fewer than 20 employees and gross revenue of under $5 million.

No matter its legitimate intent, this measure will likely make more criminals out of honest business people than it will make convicts of narco money launderers.

Under the law, anyone who owns at least 25% of a small business or has “substantial influence” must submit their full legal names, dates of birth and physical addresses, and a copy of official photo identification, such as a driver’s license.

Those who meet the requirements but fail to report could face fines of $500 a day, up to $10,000, and two years in prison. Initial reports are due Jan. 1, 2025. Any changes must be reported within 30 days.

The Treasury Department estimates the law will cover 32.6 million businesses, which will spend $21.7 billion filing the reports this year. The law is expected to apply to 5 million new businesses every year.

The average U.S. farm in 2022 sold $285,000 worth of goods, according to the USDA census of agriculture. Most farms likely will fall under the law, Kristine Tidgren, director of the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation at Iowa State University, said.

“Everybody is sort of realizing, ‘Wow, this really is a big deal,’” she said. “I say the impact of the law is seismic.”

Criminal activity, particularly narcotics trafficking, can generate large amounts of cash. But to use that money without raising suspicions, it must be made to appear to have come from a legitimate and taxed source.

No one knows how much money is laundered in the U.S. each year, but the government says criminals are exploiting gaps in reporting regulations and increasingly sophisticated methods to launder money. Hence the need to cast a wider net.

The National Small Business Association filed suit to block the law, and a federal judge ruled in its favor. The Biden administration has filed an appeal.

The association claims the law is an insidious encroachment on the liberty of law-abiding U.S. citizens not suspected of anything. Indeed.

It will require millions of women and men, and in many cases their children, to surrender personal information to the government for doing nothing more than working hard for their living.

The act will provide the feds with a list of targets.

“I’m not being facetious when I say they want names and physical addresses because they need to know where to send, for example, a SWAT team,” Tidgren, of the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, said.

But where no money laundering is found, federal agents might well discover an owner or person with “significant influence” who has become an unwitting felon by not filing.

This law is a tyranny that must not stand.