Crapo co-sponsors family farm and ranch act

Patricia R. McCoy

Capital Press
August 13, 2007


BOISE - A bipartisan bill designed to relieve farmers and ranchers from federal estate taxes is working its way through Congress, with Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, as a co-sponsor.

The Family Farm and Ranch Act of 2007 outlines specific language that relieves family farms and ranchers from the duplicate taxation dilemma presented by estate taxes, he said.

Other co-sponsors include Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas.

Crapo said his top priority is outright elimination of the death tax for everyone, not just farmers and ranchers.

"We need to significantly simply our entire tax structure. The death tax prohibits families from accumulating wealth over generations, because each new generation has to pay taxes on what their parents have accumulated," the senator said.

"I oppose estate taxes on principle. We have no reason to tax death. I would prefer a bill without any conditions, but this legislation at least offers relief for the agricultural community," he said.

"Small family-owned businesses, farms and ranches are some of the hardest hit by the death tax," Crapo said. "This is a crippling, unfair tax upon those small businesses, farms and ranches up on which our economy so solidly rests, and it should be abolished."

The proposed legislation takes into account skyrocketing farm land values, which are forcing many farm and ranch families to sell their assets in order to deal with death taxes, Crapo said. It would excuse a farmer or rancher from all estate taxes as long as the decedent owned the farm or ranch for at least five out of the past eight years, and was actively involved in managing and operating that farm or ranch for a similar period. The heirs must be related to the decedent, and U.S. citizens. The land must remain an operating farm or ranch, the senator said.

The proposed legislation also requires that half the decedent's income, or that of his family, must be derived through farming and ranching, or that the qualified lands comprise 50 percent of the decedent's gross estate, he said.

Several bills meant to totally eliminate estate taxes have failed on the Senator floor in the last three or four years, Crapo said. The only one that passed phased them out by the year 2010, but they will return the following year if it isn't permanently enacted.

Staff writer Patricia McCoy is based in Boise , Idaho . E-mail: pmccoy@capitalpress.com 

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