Few Wealthy Farmers Owe Estate Taxes, Report Says

[Rose Siding]

The number of farms on which estate tax is owed when the owners die has fallen by 82 percent since 2000, to just 300 farms, as Congress has more than doubled the threshold at which the tax applies, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released last week.

All but 27 farmers left enough liquid assets to pay taxes owed, the budget office found, although it hinted that the actual number might be zero. The study examined how much in cash, stocks and bonds these farmers left to pay estate taxes, but the report noted that no data existed on how much life insurance the farmers had put into trusts. Virtually all wealthy farmers own life insurance in trusts, say estate tax lawyers who specialize in working with farmers.

These findings come as the Senate is poised to vote this month on repeal of the estate tax. Advocates of repeal have begun showing commercials criticizing senators who oppose repeal, like Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. Many of the criticisms focus on a supposed threat to family farms.

http://nytimes.com/2005/07/10/politics/10tax.html

[brentspeak]

1. That didn't stop the Republicans

from lying through their nostrils on this issue a few years ago. When challenged with finding a single farmer who was subject to the estate tax, they could not find a single one.

[ret5hd]

2. exactly...

all while enacting policies that KILL the true "family farm".

[jmowreader]

3. We have to protect Murphy Family Farms, you know...

The Murphy family of North Carolina is a band of simple country farmers. If we don't repeal the estate tax, their heirs might have to liquidate the family spread to pay the evil IRS. We can't have that.

(Fire up your :sarcasm: tag; Murphy Family Farms is the biggest hog farming concern on the face of the earth.)

[mbperrin]

4. And your friendly assorted pretty damn big independent

oil companies in West Texas as well!

Depletion allowance let 'em beat regular taxes for years, then when that ended, they put 6 cows per square mile on to get an ag exemption, and now when they die, Junior won't have to disturb the family securities holdings or life insurance to pay taxes yet.

I sold several life policies for $3 million and more in the 70s to these types so they could use the proceeds to buy out their partners' families. But throw into general revenues - no can do!

[SoCalDem]

5. Taxing the family farm inheritance is a big ole LIE.. If the "kids"

want to give up their high-fallutin city jobs and actually RUN that farm, there would be nothing to tax (except for the property taxes that Pops always did pay anyway)..

The TAX stuff comes into play when that "family farm" is SOLD for COLD HARD CASH...probably from a developer who will parcel it out into McMansion lots.. If there are 3 or 4 grown "kids" and ONE farm, how else would the cash be divided up?

Pops got subsidies (probably for most of his farming years), and the value of his land was lower because it was a FARM.. When the 'kids' sell it, it's no longer a farm, so why wouldn't taxes be the logical outflow of a piece of property paying back its deferred taxes when it changes purpose.?

[DBoon]

6. Stop calling them "farms"

call them "plantations" or "feudal estates"

Don't call them "family farmers" - call them "barons" or "lords"

We should stop pretending that we are not regressing to the 14th century.

We are not just undoing the New Deal, we are undoing the Enlightenment.

[stepnw1f]

7. "Wealth and Our Commonwealth" - William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins

Pretty good book that talks a lot about the Republican Spin Estate Tax (Death Tax). Sneaky bastards.

[gratuitous]

8. Oh c'mon you liberals!

Just because the "threat" to family farms doesn't actually exist, does that mean that the Republicans can't still use it to beat the Democrats over the head? Gee whiz! You can use reality to prove anything that's even remotely true. But to demagogue a phony issue with a demonstrably fake threat -- well, that's just politics.

[BiggJawn]

9. But yet the "Cargo Cult ReTHUGlicans" are worried about the "Death Tax"

Gush Pfleghmball gets them all riled up that they're going to have to pay an Estate Tax on Mom's 1979 Double-wide and those 2 '76 Trans-Ams she had out back on concrete blocks...

Guy I know was going on about the "Death Tax" one day. I asked him "Look, I know your dad, and he doesn't exactly strike me as being what you'd call wealthy. He got about a million bucks squirreled away?"

"No."
Then why you worried about paying taxes on his estate? Sounds like he won't be leaving you or your sister enough to even file papers on..."

"But Rush said..."

"Hold on a minute. What Rush didn't tell you is that the ONLY people who pay that tax are people who are too stupid to hire a good tax lawyer when they probate the estate."