Joe Olivo, a member of
the small-business group NFIB and vice president
of a small, family-owned print shop in New
Jersey, today called on the U.S. Senate to this
week approve repeal of the federal death tax and
reject any watered-down
substitutes.
Olivo helps his mother and
two brothers operate Perfect Printing in Cherry
Hill, N.J. Perfect Printing was founded as a
traditional Mom and Pop small business in 1979,
but when his father passed away 12 years ago, he
left college to help run the family business.
The Olivos now employ 23 people, but those jobs
could be in jeopardy if the business must be
sold to pay a staggering death-tax bill
someday.
Olivo also countered death-tax
supporters who claim that only two percent of
Americans are affected by the death tax each
year, noting that his business already pays more
than $12,000 every year to accountants,
attorneys and financial planners just to prepare
for an eventual death-tax bill.
Our
family may be included in that misleading
statistic the one year we try to pay our
death-tax bill, but what about the tens of
thousands of dollars we're paying until then?
Olivo asked at a Capitol Hill news conference.
This cuts into my ability to provide new jobs
and buy new equipment. To say that this unfair
tax only affects a few folks like Bill Gates,
and only in the year a family head passes away,
is just dead wrong.
The U.S. Senate this
week is expected to consider U.S. House-passed
legislation to repeal the federal death tax
within ten years. As one of the two co-founders
of the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition,
NFIB has fought on the front lines for a full
repeal of the death tax for years. Any
procedural vote in the Senate on death-tax
legislation, especially a possible cloture vote
on Thursday, could be scored as an official "Key
Vote" for small business on NFIB's annual
legislative scorecard.
"Over the past
few years, small, family-business owners from
every state and demographic group have done a
great job educating their elected officials
about how this dreadful death tax hurts them,
and how the only real solution is a total
repeal," said NFIB Senior Vice President Dan
Danner. "I hope Senators will listen to the
family-business owners in their home states this
week and fully repeal this tax on the American
Dream."
The National Federation of
Independent Business (NFIB) is the nation's
largest small business advocacy group. A
nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in
1943, NFIB represents the consensus views of its
600,000 members in Washington and all 50 state
capitals. More information is available on-line
at http://www.nfib.com/.
Contact: Mary Mead
Crawford or Ed Frank
202.554.9000
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