Dealing With Tax Hikes

Dealing With The Tax Hike. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Come January 1, families all over the country will be paying higher taxes unless Congress gets cracking during the lame duck session after the election.

WOLFF: There’s every reason in the world believe that they will do a tax package in December. It will be a huge tax increase if they don’t, which isn’t good news for most people, and it will have an impact on the stock market and our financial situation and that has a lot of people worried. On the other hand there’s every reason to believe they won’t because they’ve had almost two years now to try to figure it out and they haven’t got it done.

American Farm Bureau Tax Specialist Pat Wolff says farmers and ranchers, who will be especially hard hit by giant hikes in estate and capital gains taxes, will be pushing for action on taxes to take priority in the short lame duck session.

WOLFF: They’re only going to be here about three weeks and that’s really not very long. There’s a list of things they need to get done that’s as long as my arm. The tax bill is one of them, the farm bill is another. Dealing with the sequestration issue is a third and there’s a real possibility that they’ll not have enough time to do everything. So Farm Bureau has engaged in a grassroots campaign to push the tax items that we think are most important and that is making sure that we don’t have a huge increase in the estate taxes or capital gains taxes come January 1.

Wolff says there is legislation in the works for a one-year extension of the current law.

WOLFF: Just about everyone agrees that our tax code needs an overhaul, but letting taxes go up on January 1 is not a comprehensive look at our tax code; it’s a tax accident. That one year is designed to give Congress long enough to come back and do a thoughtful, comprehensive tax reform package.

She talks about the status of important tax provisions.

WOLFF: Farmers and ranchers across the country are set to get a huge increase in taxes on January 1 unless Congress acts to prevent that from happening. Capital gains tax rates are going to go up. Estate tax rates are going to go up. The estate tax exemption is going to go down and individual income tax rates are going to change along with about 100 other tax code provisions. 

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.