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Young Missouri farmer on estate tax: ‘extremely depressing’
When he let his father know that he wanted to someday farm their land, Glen Cope recalls his father telling him that the family farm was just that; belonging to all of them, including Glen’s mother and his brother. Now he fears the estate tax that will, in 2013, revert to an exemption reduced from $5 million to $1 million and a tax rate increased from the current 35 percent to 55 percent, result in the sale of a large part of the farm so that the tax obligation can be paid.
“It’s extremely depressing and I think it’s going to be difficult for farmers to overcome, and I hope to make the point to our legislators that this is an issue that does not affect the rich,” Cope told Brownfield this week. “Farmers are not rich; we’re asset rich, but cash poor.”
Failing to repeal the estate tax, referred to by critics as the death tax, is counterproductive to the passing down of family farms, said Cope.
“We need to do our level best to bring young people back to the ranch,” he said. “We’re seeing the average age of the American farmers continue to climb, and to reverse that trend we’ve got to make it attractive for young people to come back to the farm; and a death tax is just going to stifle any ambitions that young people have.”
Cope, who chairs the American Farm Bureau Young Farmer and Rancher Committee, raises cattle in southwest Missouri.
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