A bill that would exempt free food samples from the state's 6 percent use tax passed the Idaho House 68-0 and has moved to the Senate. The bill would ensure that any producer, farm group or grocery store that offers customers free samples of food doesn't have to pay the tax.
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USDA employees ranging from meat inspectors to Farm Service Agency employees would be furloughed under the cutback in government spending that is scheduled to go into effect March 1.
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The USDA says rising commodity prices and increased cultivation of high-value crops pushed many farms into higher sales classes last year.
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Capital Press reporter Mateusz Perkowski and soon-to-be-former copy editor Will Koenig talk about fiscal cliff strategies and the increasingly complicated court battle over Clean Water Act permits on logging roads in their 78th and final podcast. Adieu!
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Fears about the "fiscal cliff" triggering higher tax rates have farmers rushing to transfer property to heirs and complete other transactions before the end of 2012, experts say.
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More than 30 national farm organizations have sent a letter asking Congress to extend estate tax relief originally passed under then-President George W. Bush.
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Property tax assessments on farm ground are up throughout Idaho, making especially sharp gains in the state's southeast corner in Power and Bingham counties.
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In this podcast, editors and reporters look at the upcoming federal trial of two ranchers charged with arson on public lands, EPA’s deregulation of runoff on logging roads, and what some rural Californians are calling an illegal tax to fund fire suppression efforts.
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In this podcast, editors and reporters discuss the outcome of Snokist’s bankruptcy, a ballot effort to keep the Malheur County extension office funded, new trends in financing organic and small farms, and why federal agencies don’t know how many millions — or billions — they are losing to environmental lawsuits.
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Idaho Democrats have proposed an ag jobs bill that would provide producers a 50 percent income tax credit when they add some type of value to an existing crop. The proposed tax credit would allow Idaho farmers or ranchers to receive the credit for investing in an agricultural processing facility.
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Sens. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Mark Udall, D-Colo., hope to ease the “devastating” estate tax burden on farming families with legislation they recently introduced. Their American Family Farm and Ranchland Protection Act, SB1901, would enable a family inheriting agricultural property to place up to half of it, up to $5 million, under a tax-free easement, if it remains in agricultural use.
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From the California Farm Bureau Federation:
Final passage of legislation extending current tax laws will benefit family farmers and ranchers—and give them time to seek longer-term reforms, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation.
“The tax package is critical to promote growth in the economy. That benefits everyone, including farmers and ranchers,” CFBF President Paul Wenger said, “and parts of the package will be especially critical on the farm.”
Wenger pointed to extension of tax rules for capital gains, gifts, income and small businesses. In particular, he said, family farmers and ranchers will benefit from revised rules regarding the federal estate tax.
“The estate tax forces farming families to take extensive and expensive actions to avoid having their farms broken apart when a family member dies,” he said. “Even then, farmers are often forced to sell land and other assets to pay estate taxes. That’s particularly true in California, where land values are so high. The tax package gives farm and ranch families two more years of certainty, but they still need a longer-term solution.”
Farm organizations including CFBF have co-sponsored legislation by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, that would defer estate taxes on family farm property as long as the farm remains in operation and stays in the family.
“We will continue to fight for this reform,” Wenger said, “which will assure that farms and ranches can remain family businesses. The two-year extension that Congress just approved will pass quickly. We won’t rest until family farmers and ranchers have permanent relief from the burdens of the estate tax.”
The California Farm Bureau Federation works to protect family farms and ranches on behalf of approximately 76,500 members statewide and as part of a nationwide network of nearly 6.3 million Farm Bureau members.
From the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's legislative newsletter, out today:
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) and the Public Lands Council (PLC) joined forces with other agricultural organizations representing farmers and ranchers to call on Congress to pass estate tax reform and to ensure President Obama understands the detrimental effect the estate tax has on family-owned farms and ranches. If Congress does nothing, the estate tax will revert to the pre-2001 levels of a $1 million exemption at a 55 percent tax rate. NCBA's Vice President of Government Affairs Colin Woodall said it doesn't take a big cattle operation to have assets in excess of $1 million.
On Tues. Nov. 29, NCBA, PLC and 29 other agricultural organizations sent a letter to President Obama urging him to take a leadership role in reforming the estate tax. The letter said, "This action will strengthen the business climate for farm and ranch families while ensuring agricultural businesses can be passed to future generations. Allowing estate taxes to be reinstated without an exemption and rate that protects family farms puts many operations at risk and threatens succession to the next generation of farmers."
In addition to sending the letter to the President, NCBA hosted a press conference with PLC and eight other agricultural organizations to call on Congress to pass meaningful, permanent estate tax reform. Scott Bennett, a junior at Virginia Tech University and an active participant in his family's ranch, spoke on behalf of NCBA. He said, "With a $1 million exemption and a 55 percent tax, we would need to sell most of our assets just to keep part of the operation in the family." Click here to watch the entire press conference, or click here to view photos from the press conference.
NCBA supports a full and permanent repeal of the estate tax but understands that in the current climate that is not "doable." NCBA supports legislation introduced in the Senate by Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and in the House by Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and Kevin Brady (R-Texas) to increase the exemption level to $5 million and reduce the rate to 35 percent. The proposals also ensure that any relief related to the exemption is tied to inflation and that a stepped-up basis is included. NCBA also supports proposals for an estate tax exemption for agriculture.
"There are only 27 days until the estate tax returns at levels that many family-owned operations won't be able to bear," NCBA President Steve Foglesong said. "Congress can't continue sitting on its hands not acting. The return of the estate tax will not only impact family-owned farms and ranches, it will have a rippling effect throughout our entire economy. This should not be a political issue. It's time to do what's right and pass permanent, meaningful estate tax reform."
Welcome to the New Amerika, where government entities aren't at all shy about making threats to get your money.
From Fox News:
A threatening TV commercial appearing in Pennsylvania has residents of the state spooked by its "Orwellian" overtones, and critics are calling it a government attempt to scare delinquent citizens into paying back taxes.Actually, a similar thing is happening to ranchers in Northern California's Siskiyou County, except it's not over taxes but regulatory fees. The state's Department of Fish and Game is basically telling ranchers to buy their water-diversion permits now or face prosecution later.
In the 30-second ad, ominous mechanical sounds whir in the background as a satellite camera zooms in through the clouds and locks onto an average Pennsylvania home. The narrator begins her cold and calculating message:
Your name is Tom ... You live just off of 5th Street ... Nice car, Tom — nice house. What's not so nice is you owe Pennsylvania $4,212 in back taxes. Listen Tom, we can make this easy. Pay online by June 18th and we'll skip your penalty and take half off your interest because Tom, we do know who you are.
The satellite snares its target — Tom's house — and the screen flashes another menacing line as the ad peters out:
FIND US BEFORE WE FIND YOU
President Obama says he's "happy to look at" a bailout plan for the newspaper industry, which some believe would amount to a virtual government takeover. But the Newspaper Association of America isn't interested, according to Advertising Age.
Proposals such as the Newspaper Revitalization Act, introduced by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., would have "limited application" in the industry, The NAA's Paul Boyle tells the ad industry publication.
Instead, how does the NAA suggest helping struggling newspapers?
So the Newspaper Association of America is pursuing efforts that would benefit all kinds of for-profit businesses -- including newspapers. One big goal, for example, is legislation that would let big businesses apply their net operating losses to their taxable income going back five years instead of the current two years. Businesses with revenue under $15 million got that break in the economic stimulus package, but the newspaper association and many others want the provision extended and expanded to larger businesses.
Another big issue, particularly next year, is pension relief. The stock market's decline means companies may need to use cash reserves to meet federal funding minimums for their pension funds, the association said, instead of protecting jobs or investing in business activities.
Iowa manufacturer Eugene Sukup writes for McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (via the California Farm Bureau Federation's Ag Alert):
The recent deaths of Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays and Ed McMahon have many Americans thinking about mortality. If you're a business owner of a certain age, as I am, it's something you think about daily.
Unlike television personalities and performing artists, most business owners labor in relative obscurity. Our legacy, when we pass, is what we've built and perhaps invented—in my case, agricultural equipment most Americans have never heard of—and the hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who depend on us for jobs.
We're unlike television personalities and recording artists in another important respect as well: When we die, the government may lay claim to half or more of our business.
Not directly, but through tax policy.
My sons are both active in the business. But they know that when my wife, Mary, and I pass, the estate tax will be so severe—estimated at $15 million to $20 million at today's tax rate—the business may have to be sold. [ ... ]If Sukup Manufacturing is fortunate enough to survive our deaths, the government will claim an additional 45 percent when our sons die (more, if Congress raises the tax rate, or allows it to increase automatically to 55 percent, as it will in 2011 under current law).
And when their children die it will take another bite until the business finally collapses or some future generation says, "We've had enough."
And all for nothing. According to a recent study by economist Stephen Entin for the American Family Business Foundation, of which I am a member, the economic damage the estate tax does to businesses such as ours—and to the economy as a whole—reduces total tax revenues by more than the estate tax brings in to the Treasury.
Read the entire commentary here.The music of Michael Jackson will live on, like Elvis' before him. But our business may not survive our deaths.
President Obama's proposed budget will reduce federal spending by $17 billion, according the a administration's estimates. (Click here for a link to an AP story on the proposed cuts.)
That sounds like a lot of money. You or I could do a lot of stuff with $17 billion.
The cuts are part of the president's proposed in a $3.4 trillion budget. I can't fathom billion, so trillion is well beyond my scope. So I decided to cut it down to something that made more sense.
What would that level of a cut mean to someone who was making $50,000 a year, or even $20,000 a year? Here's what that would mean to your paycheck, assuming of course you got every dollar of that money and there were no such things as taxes.
Someone making $50,000 a year would lose $250 out of their paycheck. Total. For the year.
Someone making $20,000 a year would lose $100. For the year. Or to put that another way, it would be like losing about a day and a half of pay, assuming a 40-hour work week and working 5 days a week.
I wonder how many people who have been laid off or had to take weeks of unpaid furlough's would trade their circumstance this year for the sacrifice Uncle Sam may be asked to make in the next fiscal year?
Click here to download a pdf of the president's proposal.
Chip Thompson, editor of the Red Bluff Daily News, noticed the irony of one of our local politicians taking part in an anti-tax-and-spending "tea party" on the day that $109 million in stimulus funds was devoted to replacing the Red Bluff Diversion Dam.
In his weekly column, he writes:
Head scratcher of the week:
Talking to Assemblyman Jim Nielsen Wednesday, I was able to break the news to him about the $109 million in stimulus money that had been dedicated to the pumping plant in Red Bluff to fill canals for farms. He was delighted.(Chip also says a few words about the aforementioned Tehama Today publication.)
It's going to benefit communities like ours, Nielsen said.
Only problem?
Nielsen was in his car on the way to Redding to participate in a Tea Party protest of the stimulus package.
To be fair, while he did praise the pumping project, he said he had deep concerns about the amount of money included in the stimulus overall. Eventually, the bill will come.
Columnist Jane Chastain has a few suggestions for how to keep the pressure on politicians in both parties now that the tea parties are over.
A sampling:
Don't listen to what your representatives say. Monitor what they do. It's easy. Each year the nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation releases a report card on Congress. One came out just last week. It is the only one to utilize EVERY roll call vote that affects tax, spending and regulatory issues. If you can read down and across, you will know immediately if your representatives should be retained. Most should not!
To be absolutely fair, since 1996, there have been few opportunities to vote on anything that would reduce federal spending. To put that another way, our presidents (both Republican and Democrat) have failed us, our congressional leaders (both Republican and Democrat) have failed us, and most of the people we sent to Washington to represent us have failed us.
Don't put your faith in a political party. Do not make donations directly to a political party. Do not give to a party's congressional or senatorial committee. The only purpose of these committees is to keep their members in power, no matter how bad they are or how they vote.
Do support worthy candidates, but make your donations directly to those candidates who pledge to abide by the principles in which you believe. Also, make donations to political action committees that back candidates (without regard to party) who support these principles.
Out of curiosity and not for a story for the paper, I spent part of my lunch hour checking out one of today's three scheduled tax day "tea parties" in Redding, Calif., near where I live.
It was no doubt much like the hundreds of other rallies in small- to mid-sized towns across the country. A couple hundred people lined the street in front of Redding's city hall, which has been derisively called the "Taj Majal" because of its ostentatious design and presence. Some of the demonstrators carried signs in a silent march around the building.
Because of the date, these gatherings have frequently been described today as "tax protests," and there was certainly no shortage of that at the Redding rally. One participant told people that the tax code would take you about 300 hours to read, but by the time you were done reading it, it would have changed.
The conversations I heard among the demonstrators covered a plethora of subjects, not just taxes. One person mentioned something he'd seen on Glenn Beck's program; another said he loved Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who asserted his support yesterday for state "sovereignty" under the 10th Amendment; and a woman talked about an argument she had with President Obama supporters about the concept of "Democratic socialism."
Several people were passing out leaflets for another protest planned for tonight at the Sundial Bridge, a recently built Redding landmark that has also been the object of some government-spending angst. They're going to dump tea into the Sacramento River; what strikes me as funny is that the packages will be sealed so as not to irk environmentalists or the government, according to a local newspaper report. Somebody's going to dump fish feed into the river, though. (What was that purported John Adams quote about having to offend somebody?)
"We just want to make a point. We don't want to hurt the fish," one organizer told me.
I saw signs that opposed abortion, illegal immigration and big government. Other signs read, "Taxed Enough Already," "Stop spending," and "Tea'd off."
What I didn't see, however, was any sign that today's tea party protests will have a lasting effect. There were no petitions going around, nobody was signing people up for this organization or that, etc. That was my curiosity -- whether these protests were a one-day flash-in-the-pan opportunity to vent, or whether they were the start of a larger movement.
Granted this was Redding, and there may have been more signs of activism at some of the big-city rallies. I heard on the radio that some politician was drumming up support at a Sacramento rally to recall a legislator that had sponsored tax increases.
Wall Street Journal columnist Glenn Harlan Reynolds believes there is a budding movement. He writes:
I didn't see much of that in Redding, though, at least at the first of its rallies. And you would figure smallish towns like Redding would be the hotbed of the kind of populist uprising that the organizers of these tea parties want.Will these flash crowds be a flash in the pan? It's possible that people who demonstrate today will find that experience cathartic enough -- or exhausting enough -- that that will be it. But it's more likely that the tea-party movement will have an impact on the 2010 and 2012 elections, and perhaps beyond.
What's most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven't ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today.
