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Many of the farms in Concord, N.H., have been passed down from
generation to generation. Each generation attempts to improve the
farm, oftentimes acquiring additional land, and constructing new
facilities.
Enter in today's land values and you quickly eat up the $1.3
million estate tax exemption. You say that $1.3 million sounds like
a big exemption and if your business is worth more, you deserve to
pay taxes to pass it on to the next generation. Our 350-acre farm
lies along the river and when you value it as a housing development,
the value is astonishing. That's not even taking into consideration
the two houses, 300 cattle, farm buildings, tractors, trucks and
equipment.
One thing that can be done to avoid having to sell the farm to
pay death taxes is to buy life insurance and use the death benefits
to pay the taxes. The life insurance that we carry on my wife's
parents costs as much as our house mortgage. It is costing us as
much to pay the federal government for the right to inherit our farm
as it costs to put a roof over our family.
People might say that I'm just crying wolf and the death tax
isn't really a threat to family farms and small business. There are
countless farms where the inheriting children had to sell the farm
that they had spent years helping to build just to pay the federal
government. Even when the farm survives the death of the parents,
the money the family had to put out for insurance and legal fees
would have been much more useful if invested back into the business.
The death tax has long outlived its usefulness. You might think
that it would cost the government too much in tax revenue to do away
with the death tax, yet it amounts to less than 1 percent of taxes
collected.
Last year Congress voted to kill the death tax, but the president
vetoed it. Let's try and convince the presidential candidates to vow
to kill the death tax, too.
Jamie Robertson is president of the Merrimack County (New
Hampshire) Farm Bureau. | 
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