Quote from @Henry Clark: @Michael PlaksIf they want to stop money laundering and funding terrorism they can control the border.  

The official answer: The Corporate Transparency Act is intended to provide law enforcement with beneficial ownership information for the purpose of detecting, preventing and punishing terrorism, money laundering and other misconduct through business entities.Uncle Sugar requires us little guys to register and be tracked even though 99.999% of us are not involved in terrorism, money laundering, or other misconduct.

And I seriously doubt any non profits are money laundering, but then again neither is Joe the Barber LLC or Betty's Property Management LLC (which, especially if they are Single Member LLC's--which flow to the 1040 without any tax return for the entity--are already identified to the government computers at the IRS.If you want to swim with the big fish you have to get wet.Maybe the resident agents will offer to fill this out as a service for $50 to $100 (???)

“I guess I missed my chance looking for a private money lender because a hard money lender was interested in my deal.”I don’t understand this—what does one have to do with the other?

(saving the money to have your own deal is the worst idea)

Does Hard Money typically cost 30-40% of the purchase price?? 

I suggest you enter private money goldmine in search botton at top right of the screen and read the previous posts....here is one that gives good perspective as well as a link to legitimate private lenders.http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/92/topics/1488...

Also, I’m pretty new to this but I’m assuming you’d have to have an LLC in place to accept hard money or money from private lenders? 

I've never had to use hard money before, so I am not sure what type of conditions are reasonable.

I would focus on saving enough money that if I had a deal go bad, then that money I saved was there to cover it.