Bob, you know, they paid into that system ALSO, correct? Have they not already done their bit to build and support the system that you speak of?

Police are generally apid forout of County Funds (since i doubt any farms are city based, since City laws generally prevent such, unless grandfathered in), so I am sure said farm thru property taxes is already paying for said police, like all people in the County are.

Agreed on the subsidized housing, but many other groups besides farmers pay far less or nothing at all to enjoy this same infrastructure support, so why single out farmers, who lets be honest, are not exactly living 'high on the hog'

Most farmers have wells, sorry. I know very few farmers who rely on city water to run their farm, as they have creeks/ponds/wells doing that, because when the farm was created there was no 'city water'

We all know what the tax is 'suppose' to be doing, but it certainly is not doing that exactly.

Your thoughts on the farm being a 'limited liability' holds merit, but it has nothing to do with IQ, but with knowledge. Many of these people are ignorant to such things, however, over the weekend, I am going to ask a few just for the hell of it and see what they say..

So lets carve the land up, sell it to developers, and then when we cant feed ourselves anymore, then what? And yes, that is a 'worst case scenario' but farm land in America is disappearing VERY fast right now, so we should be thinking of this now, not later.

Not to mention *most* of that "wealth" in on paper, not in cash, making the whole proposition of taxing the inheritence all the more ridiculous!

"See, there's this form of business organization the government allows you to do called the limited liability entity, which allows you to create an immortal organization and reap the benefits."

Please explain. Does a limited liability entity not have to pay tax?

And I have no problem with selling inhereted property and getong rich off of it. I was trying to provide an alternative that assumes the feds won't do away with the estate tax altogether that allows a family to keep non-cash property and not have to pay cahs until said property is liquidated. I'd rather they just not have to pay tax on anything eprios, or limit it to easily liquidated assets (i.e. cash and stocks/bonds/CDs). But uncle Sam ain't about to give up the cash cow.

@stressed,

Yep, they've already paid into the kitty, and reaped benefits out of it. But in order to accomplish the many things we as a society ask our government to do for us, we're going to have to raise the money to pay for them somehow. I find the estate tax to be a magnificently fair way of doing that. It is about the most progressive tax we can create, and given the large body of evidence proving that marginal taxation hurts the economy more when it is applied to the poorer members of society, we all benefit. Hooray, estate tax!

@Gen Lee, LLC's pay tax on what they make, sure. But we aren't talking about profits made here. We are talking about estates which were taxed to begin with by the person who owned them. Estate taxes are technical double taxation and *should* be found unconstitutional, but then again so should sales taxes. You paid taxes on the money used to buy the goods, then you have to pay again? Taxes are the single greatest organized crime sindicate in the history of the US and the IRS is worse than a protection racket cause they can garnish your wages without so much as a court order.

@Gen. Lee

Not an estate tax. Now, the shareholders in a limited liability company may have to pay taxation based upon the value of their shares, and this is where you get into accounting issues, but the company itself survives the death of its shareholders.

+1 to Gen. Lee, but +1 to Bob for the tapir reference.

The problem (to me) with the "you didn't build that" mindset is that it seems to me like the speaker is assuming that because the government provides citizens with certain services, the citizen no longer enjoys the right to his own property. Incorrect. The citizen has received services, but he has also paid for those services along the way in a variety of ways - through taxes, through community service, perhaps through military service, and so on. All citizens have paid along the way and enjoyed the services provided to all, but some have prospered more financially than others. That doesn't negate property rights.

So, I guess Bob thinks that Billy Bob, in his trailer, living on a 80 acre farm, making after taxes about 28000 a year, growing corn, soy beans, a few headof cow dies, his son Billy Bob Jr, must pay 55% on the value of that farm that is making 28000, so Jr needs to find 2.1 million dollars (assuming value of farm is 4 million). Is that right Bob, is that what you are suggesting?

Exactly Bob, it flows through to the owners. And the owners value of what they own includes whatever % of the LLC that they own and the value of it, which includes the Assets that were put in. There is no magic super loophole that only rich people know about to avoid taxes, that is a constant lie the Left tells to the uninformed to encourage class warfare.

So now Bob is a big fan of corporations? YEah...fuck the family owned farm...take all the money away when grandpa dies.. When a CEO retires, I guess corporations should have to hand over half their value to the government, right? SAME thing, isn't it? Transfer of control? The only thign different is how many lawyers were involved.

Sheer hypocricy.

It would be 2.2 million, SL.

thats fine Drau, the $$ amount was not important, but thanks for the quick fix. I am curious what Bob thinks said farmer will do. Obvious answer is...sell his farm to the highest bidder, which WONT be another farmer.

But Gen.Lee. It is much easier to "sell" a share in the family farm for a pittance to the family members so that when Farmer Bob passes, he only owns 1/5th of the farm. His wife owns 1/5th. The daughter owns 1/5th. And the two sons each own 1/5th. When Farmer Bob dies, only 1/5th of the farm is taxable and it gets passed down to the four remaining share holders so that they only pay taxes collectively on 1/5th of the farm. Better to owe 110,000 each than 550,000 each. And even better is the fact that surviving spouses don't generally pay estate tax so he leaves his share to the wife who then sells it again to the three kids for a pittance.

But again, it is truly irrelavent if, shoudl we beforced to keep estate taxes (and we will, no doubt) we modify it to only make liquid assets taxable and all others are taxed upon sale.

Draug, I think you have a elegantly simple solution - and for that reason it will never become law.

No Draug it doesn't work that way.

a) there are related party rules that prevent selling items to related parties at a loss. The loss is disallowed.
b) there are related party rules that prevent recapture the difference between the FMV and the sales price as a gift...gift tax.

*scratch prevent above

@FlemGem - Thanks. I know they will never be implemented because the federal government just can't do easy, logical, and fair. They can't do any one of the three, much less all three. :-)

@Gen.Lee - I didn't know that. But then I'm not a farmer and my LLC is just there ot prevent a lawsuit from making me personally go broke if some idiot decided my software didn't meat his needs (despite the disclaimer) and some idiot judge decided the disclaimer (which is standard on virtually all out-of-the-box purchased software solutions) wasn't valid. And yes, those idiot judges exist...

What is the annual gift limit and the "one time" gift limit for tax exempt gifting? I know they exist, but I don't know what they are.

Government should have a death tax and a sales tax of 30% and a property tax of 1% and thats it.

And no income tax? I could live with that assuming the sales tax is only on non-vital goods (i.e. no taxing fresh meat, produce, milk, etc).

the 1 million referenced above for 2013 will be allowed as lifetime tax free gifts OR as a exemption from your estate at death, not both.

Now you can give up to 13,000 per year as the annual exclusion.

So you divide the value of the farm into shares of 6,500 dollars and start giving 2 share a year to family members then as the family grows and those shares grow in value you shift to one share a year. Over the course of say 25 years, you may well have given away 50% to 75% of the farm so they have those shares tax free. Is that feasible?

So my read on gifting indicates that if you only gift under the annual per person gifting, it doesn't apply to your lifetime maximum gifting. So with some fancy accounting you *could* give away the entire 4 million farm or at least enough to put the remaining value under the limit for estate taxes.

http://fairmark.com/general-taxation/tax-rules-for-gifts/

That is correct the annual exclusion doesn't effect the lifetime exemption. So in theory yes, but is that realistic?

Not fancy accounting, with a lot of people you desired to give away your wealth to or many many years of doing it. And slowly losing control every year.

Hey Krellin, MAN UP

(I think Krellin has me muted. Will someone tell him to MAN UP please?)

This is for Krellin cause I am sick of this shit. Hey Jamie. FUCK OFF!