Death Taxes: Punishing Farmers For Dying

4 Pages 1088 Words

Punishing Farmers for Dying
In the United State of America, they say there are two things you can count on: death and taxes. Actually, there's a third; Death Taxes. A more apt saying today might end, "death and then taxes." Year after year, all your life, the IRS taxes your earnings. Then when you die, the final insult? They tax you again on income and assets already taxed, but this time, at an astonishing rate of 55 percent. The Death Tax is putting Kansas family farms out of business and employees out of jobs. The United States Senate should end the Death Tax once and for all right now. No halfway solutions. It’s about fairness, families and jobs.
Taxing people twice? It's unfair, and it's un-American. Imagine working all your life to build a family business; a farm, or a ranch for example. Then when you die, your children have to sell the family business just to pay the taxes. Death taxes are causing open space to be lost, surviving family members to be displaced, employees to lose their jobs and rural communities to lose their economic base."
A death in the family is never easy. In addition to dealing with our grief, we must also notify friends and family and make funeral arrangements. For many Kansas families, a death in the family is also accompanied by another unpleasant experience, a big tax bill.
The federal estate tax hits small businesses and farms the hardest. Even a modest-sized Kansas farm can be subject to marginal estate tax rates of over 50 percent. Faced with a big tax bill, many families are forced to sell family-held businesses just to pay the federal estate tax. Kansas Congressman Jerry Moran’s office sent this statement regarding his position: “I am one who believes taxes are too high and that the ‘Death Tax’ is a particularly insulting punctuation mark on a life filled with taxation.” Kansans today pay state and federal income taxes on every dollar they earn. They pay sales tax on everyt...