Senator Blunt On Small Business Tax Hikes: This Is No Way To Do Business Blunt: Death Tax Hike Would Disproportionately Hurt Family Farms, Ranches In Missouri
BigNews.Biz - Jul 29,2012 - Senator Blunt On Small Business Tax Hikes: This Is No Way To Do Business
Blunt: Death Tax Hike Would Disproportionately Hurt Family Farms, Ranches In Missouri
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) voted against U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (Nev.) small business tax hike, which included a provision that would increase the death tax from its current rate of 35 percent to 55 percent.
“This is no way to do business. A vote for this small business tax hike is a vote that will disproportionately hurt family farms, ranches, and small businesses in states like Missouri, where agriculture is our number one industry,” said Blunt, who serves as Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies.
In a letter this week, the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation noted that the Democrats’ estate tax exemption “is not high enough to protect a typical farm or ranch from estate taxes considering land values and the cost of machinery, equipment and farm buildings.” Missouri has more than 100,000 individual farms – the second highest number of farms of any state in the nation.
“We’re facing a year-end fiscal cliff and job creators need more certainty – not less. The President and his party leaders should work with Congress to extend the current tax rates for all Americans immediately and focus on responsible, comprehensive tax reform to give businesses the confidence they need to invest and grow,” Blunt continued. “Elections matter, and Americans will have a chance to send a very clear message to reject the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama’s deeply flawed economic agenda this November.”
Pro-jobs groups – including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Association Of Wholesaler-Distributors – have called the Democrats’ plan a “massive tax hike on American businesses” and warned it “would do great harm to middle class.” A recent report by Ernst & Young found that the President’s tax hike would be a major blow to America’s small businesses and the economy.
In 2010, President Barack Obama admitted that allowing the tax rates to increase “would have been a blow to our economy.” The President also said that allowing taxes to increase would mean “the economy would grow less.”
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