Such hurdles were outlined Tuesday at a Capital Hill summit organized by The Death Tax Elimination Coalition. NCBA is a member of the coalition. The summit was a move to gain support from untraditional allies for the early June death tax vote in the House.

NCBA member Phyllis Gardner, a cattle producer from Max, Neb., described a number of the many loops through which cattle families must jump to pay estate taxes and maintain the family business.

"I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a CPA. I'm just a rancher's wife who wants to stay on the land -- land that has been in the family for 115 years,” Gardner said.

The Gardner family had built a successful enterprise through hard work and participation of family members. After the death of her father-in-law, Gardner and her family had to navigate many channels just to keep the ranch in the family. The family hired an accountant and financial planner before his death, but closely adhering to this expert advice wasn’t enough.

“To keep from losing the ranch, we’ve had to enter a lease arrangement with other relatives,” Gardner said. “This situation has reduced our income to the point that meticulous management is necessary to just stay current -- let alone provide for long-standing plans to expand the operation so that our grandson can work the ranch, too.”

The elder Gardner had deeded some of his land to his four children through the gift provision of the death tax code, but only Gardner and her husband work the operation. Gardner and her husband purchased life insurance with plans to buy their siblings’ share of the land after her father-in-law’s death. The coverage was not enough to cover the estate tax and the land purchase.

Further complicating the situation, Gardner said, “We discovered that if the siblings sold their shares to my husband and me, they would have to pay costly capital gains taxes. That would have only added to the problem of taking on significant debt to buy the land. So the only real option has been this complicated lease agreement.”

According to a 1997 study by Kennesaw State University, family businesses often face heavy estate tax burdens because much of their capital is concentrated in the business. For cattle producers, the impact is even greater because the majority of assets include land, in addition to other tools necessary to manage an operation.

NCBA commissioned the research to demonstrate the negative impact of death taxes of the nation's ranchers, the majority (98%) of which are family-owned businesses.

Financial planning is expensive and can drain resources from the family and the business when taxes become due, the study stated. As in the Gardner’s case, financial planning is not a guarantee that families can meet the government tax obligation.

Estate taxes are harmful not only to individual families but also to the rural economy. The beef industry provides 186,000 full-time jobs on farms and ranches and supports an additional 1.37 million jobs throughout the economy, adding $153 billion to the U.S. economy.

Some of the jobs that these operations provide are often lost when estate taxes become due, the Kennesaw study showed. What's more, the analysis showed that death taxes generate insignificant revenue for the U.S. government when the dollars are compared to the cost of death planning, the collection of death taxes, the lost jobs and the unrealized growth of family businesses.

“Nothing positive can be said about the death tax and its impact on cattle producers and other small family businesses,” said Dale Moore, NCBA director of legislative affairs. “We’ve always maintained that death is a lousy event to tax. Increasingly, the fallout from this tax destroys families’ ability to earn a living doing what many have been doing for generations.”