Congress is getting to work on a tax package that would extend the 2017 tax cuts.
Some ag industry members advocate for the death tax as a possible tax cut and ask for a permanent exemption for farmers and ranchers. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says this would protect thousands of farms.
“This is a country that is custom-built for agriculture. Everyone else in the world is jealous of what we have and because of the quality of what we have, and we’re really good at using it. The problem is as that value goes up if the tax code doesn’t reflect that, then you’re going to have a lot of people that are caught up in it. That’s one of the things we found in our tax survey is that if that death tax rolls back, we have 61% of those 1,200 survey respondents that are going to suffer from this, and that’s reflective on the whole industry. This is not a handful of people that are going to get caught up in it. If this prevents back to that $5,000,000 adjusted for inflation, if it goes back then that’s going to hit a ton of people,” according to Kent Bacus.
Bacus says that a permanent repeal of death taxes on ag land has strong support in both the House and Senate, but he believes that it is going to come down to crunching the numbers.
“We want permanency in this, but as far as, you know, Congress’s ability to pay for all of it— we don’t know. It’s still a little early to tell. I think, there’s broad support for having permanent repeal of this, but you know, as they get to those backrooms and they crunch numbers, we don’t know what that outcome is going to look like,” he notes. “But that’s why we have to come down so hard on this. We can’t start compromising on the get-go. Otherwise, you’re never going to achieve. So, we’ve taken that firm position that we need full permanent repeal of the death tax. We need this for future generations.”
He expects Congress to send a package to President Trump by the end of May, but he says that there could be some hang-ups in the Senate.
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