President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are on the campaign trail discussing issues that will directly affect farmers.
Tax policy is key talking point in the presidential campaign, including the codes that impact agriculture.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden wants to invest $400 billion dollars in clean energy and $20 billion dollars in rural broadband. He plans to pay for it by rolling back President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
“We can pay for these investments by ending loopholes, unnecessary loopholes in the President’s $1.3 trillion dollar tax giveaway to the wealthiest 1 percent and the biggest, most profitable corporations, some of which do not pay any tax at all,” Biden said.
Illinois Republican John Shimkus says that some of the tax cuts were big wins for agriculture, including the elimination of the estate tax.
“The ag community really likes the elimination of the ‘death tax.’ Especially in rural, small-town America, the accumulation of property over decades, family owned farms. They will tell you the stories of selling acreage or selling the farm to pay a tax,” he said. “We don’t think death should be a taxable event.”
After visiting a produce processing center in North Carolina, President Trump reiterated the importance of protecting family owned businesses.
“Now, the ‘death tax’ is a big deal, if you have a farm or a business... and you want to leave it to your beautiful family... and they have to go out and get a big mortgage from the bank because they have big estate taxes, call it whatever you want, we call it a ‘death tax.’ They don’t have to do that anymore... They won’t be losing the business or losing the farm because we slashed regulations, cut the ‘death tax’, estate tax, got rid of it.”
Biden would also increase corporate taxes back up to 28 percent. American Farm Bureau’s Pat Wolff says that when the 2017 bill was passed most of the tax breaks went to small passthrough operations.
On the campaign trail, President Trump has been promising more tax cuts in general. While Biden is proposing a total of almost $4 trillion dollars in new taxes to pay for initiatives that would benefit rural America.