Just exempt farms from estate tax plans

I wonder if there is a simpler solution that will address the concerns of the farmers. If Congress truly feels that our farms are critical to ongoing, affordable food supply, why do they not just carve out family farms from the estate tax requirements?

It would be easy to exempt family farms from the tax by simply requiring the heirs to agree to continue to operate the farm as an ongoing concern. Should they decide to sell the farm, then they would be subject to the same estate tax as all others.

Raise the threshold for paying estate taxes each year by the same consumer price index calculations the government uses for other benefit programs like Social Security to keep pace with inflation. But don’t expect the average taxpayer to subsidize the rich and ultrarich by eliminating this important source of tax revenue altogether.

Linda Ollis

Beaufort, S.C.

The estate tax is/was intended to help prevent super wealth, not family farms. I’m OK with raising the limit, but we must heavily tax the millionaire class. There are a lot of loop holes that need to be closed on the estate tax. Sam Walton died, yet his family is still worth billions. We fought the Revolutionary War to free ourselves from nobility. We need the estate tax now more than ever.

Rick Curtis

I’m sorry people hate the idea of passing wealth to children, but that’s the whole point. Some parents work hard to give everything they fought for to their children so they can get a leg up.

However, each year inflation drops the value of the dollar, and that means the estate tax is actually getting more burdensome to small business owners, farmers and anyone with $5 million or more worth of assets.

John Malintone

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