Estate Tax and Farmers

Several days ago, I reported on an article by David Cay Johnson entitled Few Wealthy Farmers Owe Estate Taxes, Report Says, NY Times, July 10, 2005.

Mr. Robert S. Schwartz, Managing Director of Parkview Capital Management L.L.C. in Columbus, Ohio wrote to me as follows regarding this article:

In his usual polemical style, Cay Johnston misses the bigger picture. Farmers are being forced into very expensive planning exercises in order to cope with the estate tax.  Second, no study will show how many farmers could not afford the planning exercise and sold out before they died. Farming is an asset intensive business, many of the assets are special use, non portable (think about investing in drainage) or otherwise illiquid. Adding estate tax to the burden just makes it that much more expensive, with no corresponding social gain.There has got to be a faster cheaper way for the government to raise money.