The Missouri Farm Bureau is keeping a close watch on Capitol Hill in Washington as the effort to repeal the estate tax moves from the House to the Senate. The next stop in the effort to permanently repeal the estate tax is the U.S. Senate after the U.S. House voted overwhelmingly, last week, to eliminate it. Charlie Kruse, President of the Missouri Farm Bureau, says elimination of the so-called death tax is crucial to owners of small family businesses who have to sell the businesses just to pay the inheritance tax. He says it’s particularly tough on the family farm. Kruse says family farms are dismantled by this tax. The estate tax rate has been slowly diminishing since Congress last acted and will be phased out completely by the year 2010. But it will return in 2011 unless Congress repeals it permanently.
