Many farm policy organizations have been lobbying for years now that estate taxes should be permanently eliminated, opposing the collection of capital gains taxes at death. Legislation that provides exemption levels expires at the end of 2025, and some lawyers and estate planners are already talking about it.
“ I call this the estate tax exemption repeal boogeyman, version 4.0.”
That’s “The Farm Lawyer,” John Schwarz. He’s a third-generation farmer and agricultural law attorney based in Cass County, Indiana. He says this because it’s the fourth time in his 18-year law career that he’s seen what he calls fear mongering from some in his industry about the estate tax.
“I hear things, and I see things where people are basically scaring people again, and in my opinion, to do things that, from an estate planning standpoint, that they may not do if it wasn’t for this fear that somehow the estate tax is going to drop substantially, and all of a sudden, farms will be lost because of the estate tax.”
Schwarz says if you have a good succession plan in place, have LLCs, or have taken other steps, you’ll be in fine shape to react to what Congress may or may not do. If you contact a farm lawyer like him, there are options available, like yearly gifting.
“Each year, you can do some gifting. This year, $17,000, you can gift: shares in companies, cash, things like that. You can start doing some small gifting, try to get some of the value out of your estate. A lot of times with the value of farm estates, that won’t dent it as much as we need to. So we look at some of the other tools that quite frankly, really fit nicely into farm estate planning.”
Schwarz goes into much more detail in our full interview. Hear it in the player below, and find Schwarz at TheFarmLawyer.com.
