Halloween Special: Death and Taxes

Boo To The Unthinking Toadies!

This Sunday's paper (the Quincy Herald-Whig, 10/30/11) carries our local Ag columnist's opinion on the logic of the Estate Tax.

We learn that "Agriculture" is pushing a plan to completely do away with a tax which brings in tens of billions of dollars a year. Tax chop enthusiasts speak the language of the Bush Tax Cuts of ten years ago; that tax cutting will spur so much growth in the economy that just taxing that new bonanza will outstrip foresaken revenues.

Except..., this time supply-side economics will really work!

Not only is our friendly Ag columnist spouting the party line, one that we tried and found wanting (Did the Bush Tax Cuts spur the economy? No. Instead, they piled debt up to the ceiling--just look at how our economy flat-lined after those enormous cuts), but if most farmers knew the facts, they'd likely think twice.

Take a look at who pays the tax and you come away with little sympathy for whoever it is behind the movement to change the law. From Mother Jones magazine we learn:

"According to the Tax Policy Center, even under the rather generous 2009 estate tax parameters, only" 1 in every 500 deaths "will incur the estate tax. In fact, only 100 farms in the entire country" were likely "slapped with an estate tax, and family-owned farms already receive special considerations. For example, they're allowed to evaluate their property at its "current-use value, rather than its fair market value," a reduction allowed up to $1 million.... The few farms that do have to pay the estate tax only have to pay interest for the first five years, then can pay the rest in 10 yearly installments. The exemptions are so extensive that only a quarter of the farms that qualify for the tax actually have to pay it."

Uh, sorry, but I really don't think owners of the 100 largest farms in the country are in need of our sympathy.

Think of it this way. Contrary to the language used by our local Ag columnist, eliminating the tax will not do much of anything for local economies. Most likely, it would instead hurt rural America. That's because the current trend is toward Ag consolidation. That means that instead of a dozen farmers and their families living on the land, we're talking about fewer still. Fewer families and fewer churches, schools, shops, pretty soon small villages wither away and die. And meanwhile, huge farms take their place. Are these larger farms run by good people? Probably no different from smaller farms.

The estate tax, though, is one of the few tools we have to put the brakes on big farms. And whether big farm organizations have the money to throw around in the political arena shouldn't mean we have to say 'Amen' to their arguments.