Billie Jo is a hand on the bookkeeping bench of the 14 limited-liability companies I own through two holding entities inMississippi and one in Delaware. The software that would automate the BOI cross-reference costs $14 a month per entity, and I’ve declined to buy it. She’s filed the reports by hand for 19 days this quarter. The tendons in her right wrist have begun to lock in the position she holds the pen. The intake at the urgent-care clinic in Hattiesburg was $240. I haven’t approved the referral. The medical bill you opened last week and set on the counter and intended to call about — it’s going to end up in one of those 14 LLCs inside of 6 months. I buy the debt at 4¢ on the dollar. Billie Jo’s hand on the BOI form is the hand on the title to your bill.

Dear Operator — you wrote to thank me for the alliance. The Lord ordains the property right. FinCEN files the form. I’m going to walk you from the burden to the principle. We’ll be in the principle by paragraph four. Your thank-you arrived on the same morning William McGurn published in the Wall Street Journal urging Congress to repeal the Corporate Transparency Act in full. McGurn’s right that the Treasury’s March 2025 exemption of 32 million small businesses was a partial win. The full repeal would lift the form off your desk. I want it lifted too. I’m a small-business owner. I’m also the structure the lift wasn’t designed for. The form isn’t a poll-tax. The form is a census. We don’t want the same thing. We want different things. The wanting looks the same from your chair.

The poll-tax is repealed at the level of the small operator. The census isn’t.

Now let me show you the arithmetic, because the arithmetic is where the Lord keeps His ledger.

The form is 12 pages of instruction. There are 23 data fields. Beneficial owner’s full legal name. Date of birth. Residential address. Identifying number from a passport or driver’s license. Billie Jo spends 4 hours filing per entity. That includes the cross-reference to the holdings chart I keep in a drawer. The total is 56 hours of labor for the cycle. The subscription that would automate the cross-reference is $196 a month, or $2,352 a year. Billie Jo’s time, at her rate, costs $1,064 for the cycle. I save $1,288 a year by not automating.

38¢ a minute. Billie Jo’s wrist locks at the 47-minute mark. I haven’t priced the specialist. I haven’t priced her daughter’s tuition. The bus she’d take, if I approved the referral, is $14 round trip. The wrist is above her rate. I keep the 38¢.

Hold that figure. We’re going to need it.

The form is the census. The census is the list. Once the list is made, every regime that depends on knowing who owns what becomes possible. The wealth tax. The estate tax. The size-cap regulation. The antitrust divisor. I’ve read this part of the menu. I haven’t read what the next regime will charge me for the listing. The list is the cheaper of the two costs. The other cost is the bill the listing generates. The bill is in the next cycle. I’m told the next cycle’s regime will be polite to productive estates. I haven’t priced politeness.

The same law that holds Billie Jo’s wrist holds the 6-foot clay wall above Faron’s head.

Faron is a body in a trench on a sewer-lateral crew I own through a Delaware LLC operating in the Arkansas Delta. The new cul-de-sac your realtor showed you last weekend — the one with the deep lots and the mature oaks — was tied to the municipal line by his hands. The trench walls were unshored. The aluminum trench box costs $140 a day to rent. For a 3-week lateral job, that is $2,940. I declined the box. I classified the shoring as an optional site-prep expense. The dirt came down on a Tuesday. Faron is now a closed-casket expense. I kept the $2,940. You paid for the cul-de-sac. The LLC paid for the dirt. The margin is the distance between the two.

The equipment of the farm is threefold: the articulate, the half-articulate, and the mute. — Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, Book 1, Chapter 17 (37 BCE)

The master in 37 BCE had to feed the instrumentum vocale. The master in 1850 had to maintain the chattel. The master in 2026 has the LLC. I’ve externalized the maintenance cost onto the taxpayer, and I’ve externalized the liability onto the shell. The shell is the modern innovation. It is the fence that apologizes to nothing, because the fence has no name.

Renee is at the end of the spray nozzle, 600 miles away, in a different shell, breathing the same law.

Renee is a hand on the powder-coating line of a metal-fabrication subsidiary I hold through a Pennsylvania LLC. The parts she coats go into the HVAC unit on your roof. The powder contains hexavalent chromium. The rated respirator cartridge costs $12. I bought the unrated one for $4. I kept the $8 difference.

Renee has a cough. It wakes her at 3 in the morning. She sits on the edge of the bed and waits for her lungs to stop shaking.

And here is where the Corporate Transparency Act enters the room. If the CTA is repealed, as McGurn begs, the attorney cannot pull the beneficial-ownership registry. He cannot prove that the Pennsylvania LLC and the Arkansas LLC and the 6 other shells in between are all capitalized by the same holding company, managed by the same operating agreement, and funneled to the same bank account. He cannot pierce the veil. He hits the $50. It’s the only map the plaintiff has left.

3 workers. Three shells. One holding company. One bank account. The form is what connects the three, and the form is what McGurn wants me excused from filing.

McGurn and the NFIB want to protect the 32 million small businesses. What they are actually protecting is the 32 million hiding places. If you require me to put my name on the form, you are requiring me to stand behind the whip. Scripture is not innumerate on this point: the borrower is servant to the lender, and the lien is the leash, and the leash is what the form is trying to clip.

I’m not unusual. I’m a curriculum. I taught the BOI form for 11 semesters at Warden. The graduates are sitting in the firms that set your software. The best of them is at a fintech. She’s built a SaaS that does the cross-reference in 90 seconds. I haven’t bought it. She priced it for me, knowing I wouldn’t buy. She’s correct. I taught her well. She runs the subtraction faster than I do. There are 32 million of me. The exemption took 32 million of you off the list. I’m still on the list. The exemption is what keeps the list from looking like a poll-tax. The list, made for me, is what your exemption is for. You aren’t reading one man’s form. You’re reading the principle 32 million operators are now petitioning to keep small enough to dodge.

Billie Jo has begun to ask whether the holding entities should be reorganized. I’ve told her no. I haven’t told her the principle. She hasn’t asked. She’s paid $19 an hour. The question is above her rate.

The form is mine. The list is mine. The chain is mine. I’m fine. I’ve priced the form. I haven’t priced the next regime’s menu. I expect the menu’ll be polite. I expect to be fine then, too.

Sterling A. Varice holds the Hayek-Friedman Chair and serves as Dean of Instruction at Warden University’s College of Business and Economics in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of three textbooks: Divine Mandates for Labor Utilization, Social Obligations for Profit Maximization, and Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation.