US Senators Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran of Kansas are co-sponsoring a reintroduced bill designed to increase to access capital for ag producers and rural communities.
The bill is called the Access to Credit for our Rural Economy, or ACRE, Act. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Moran and Marshall, say this will give financial institutions more flexibility to affordable lines of credit to agricultural and rural customers.
*ACRE would exclude interest “received on certain loans secured by rural or agricultural real property from gross income.”
*If approved, farm real estate borrowers and rural homeowners will have have access to lower interest rates because they could use the same tax-exempt status on certain earned interest policies used by other lenders.
Lawmakers supporting the ACRE Act say this will apply in rural communities with less than 2,500 residents. This would apply to ag real estate and singly-family home mortgage loans under $750,000. Lawmakers also say this could expand access to over 4,000 rural communities across the country, saving ag producers over $400 million just in interest costs.
