Posted on 02/21/2009 7:54:52 AM PST by george76
For Dale Allee, a second-generation cattle rancher in southern Colorado, the idiom that nothing is certain but death and taxes is now a reality.
"I just turned 80 last week. You know what that means? That means I'm not going to be around here very long, and somebody's going to have to pay those taxes," said Allee, who fears federal estate taxes will thwart his plans to pass his 4,200-acre Pueblo County ranch to his children.
Land-rich but cash poor, Western ranchers are lobbying Washington to exempt them from the estate tax, which can force heirs to sell their inheritance — often to real estate developers — to pay the duty within a nine-month deadline.
"I don't like subdivisions and I don't like development," Allee said. "There's a lot of us around here that have got that feeling. We just don't want to see houses built all over our land."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“I’m not an educated man and I’m not a moneyed man,”
“I’m just a cowboy... an 80-year-old cowboy now.”
In the Zimbabwe model, land confiscation and crony redistribution is very important. Onerous inheritance taxes are a nonviolent way to accomplish the same thing.
in the end, government owns everything. it’s the marxist way.
The death tax is the worst tax that that the government can inflict on you. They taxed you to death by placing obstacles in your path to limit your ability to own land, then when you die they see another opportunity to grab what they did not earn and prevent your heirs from benefitting from your wishes.
Don’t worry it will be in good hands. Some Hollyweird Star will buy it.
re: They taxed you to death by placing obstacles in your path to limit your ability to own land
And then when you did manage to overcome all the obstacles put in your way and actually own or earn something they taxed the hell out of it.
There is no doubt in my mind that government is the biggest single threat to America and our way of life.
which indicates a low marginal value for the land or an inability to get money out of the land.
Being a tax collector may become a dangerous line of work real soon...
Put it in a Trust while you still can, my 86 yr old MIL did it years ago. There are ways around this if you have trust in your heirs.
Everyone should be exempt, not just ranchers. Why would they ask just for ranchers to be exempt???
-—yep—while I’m not an expert on tax law, my folks farm has been in a Limited Liability Corporation for some years—my mother still has technical control of it.
Why just for Western ranchers?
No one should be subject to this kind of theft.
Colorado is ruled by the minority RATS. They have cornered more money and turned it into political power. They have taken fuel tax money and put it into the general tax fund and failed to fix the roads. They raised the fuel tax and still failed to fix the roads. They put oil resources off limits and make fuel prices even higher. Can you still buy coal in Colorado? All the mines I know of are closed.
Of the People, By the People and For the People? Not according to the rats!
I wish more old cowboy ranchers would get some basic legal estate advise.
When they do not, the ranch gets broken up for the estate taxes on the old boy and then the kids can get hit with additional capital gain taxes.
The IRS can get a two for one.
Then the adult kids end up in an apartment somewhere in a city.
That is very good advice as long as you do it right and fully fund the trust. That means everything gets titled into the trust - house, land, vehicles, bank accounts, etc. Most people start the process, but find that they don't want to go through all the hassle and expense to fully fund it, so they end up being partially funded or dissolved.
My parents set up a Revocable Family Trust years ago (when we all lived in Colorado, no less) and they did it the right way. As they got older, they gradually added us as Trustees. When dad passed away, all of us children were finally added as Trustees, and then when mom passed last year it has made it very easy for us, since her estate (being in the Trust) does not have to go through probate. The Trust will file her last tax return and take care of any of those things. The only drawback we see right now is that we are having to wait for several large CD's to mature before we can close them out and we still have not been able to sell their house in Sun City West (Arizona), so that is dragging out the process of dissolving the Trust, and we (the Trust) may have to file one more year of tax returns due to not being able to close out everything by the end of 2008.
There are many pros and cons about trusts, but they are definitely worth looking in to.
I wonder if Dale could sell his land to his family now, for a greatly reduced cost.
So these folks are hoping that a dedicated Marxist will allow them to keep their own stuff??!! Do you want to tell them, or shall I?
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