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Proposed Tax Regulation Threaten Multigenerational Cattle Operations

The Internal Revenue Service hosted a public hearing today on a Department of Treasury proposed rule that would eliminate or greatly reduce available valuation discounts for family-related entities. Kevin Kester, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association vice president, said the regulation would effectively discourage families from continuing to operate or grow their businesses and passing them on to future generations.

Many cattle operations are family-owned small businesses, facing the same concerns as other small-businesses - making payroll, complying with numerous federal and state regulations, and paying bills, loans, and taxes. However, cattle producers face a number of unique challenges specific to agriculture.

“Ranching is a debt-intensive business, making the U.S. livestock industry especially vulnerable to the estate tax,” said Kester. “Beef producers largely operate an asset-rich, cash-poor business model: a cattleman’s biggest asset is his land. In the event of the death of a principal family member, illiquid assets are often sold in order to meet the costs associated with the estate tax.  As a result, many families are unable to keep their estates intact.”

For more than two decades, livestock producers have utilized legitimate valuation discounts as a means of maintaining family ownership. These discounts, which accurately reflect the actual market value of minority ownerships in closely-held businesses, reduce the tax burden at death allowing agricultural operations to maintain family ownership from one generation of producers to the next.

 

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Leman Swine Conference: Vaccination strategies to reduce PRRS virus recombination

Video: Leman Swine Conference: Vaccination strategies to reduce PRRS virus recombination

Dr. Jay Calvert, Research Director with Zoetis, recently spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the 2023 Leman Swine Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, about his conference presentation on porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus recombination.

“The number one problem in PRRS these days from a vaccine point of view is the emergence of new strains of PRRS. Since the beginning, we have had new strains and a lot of diversity,” said Dr. Jay Calvert. “We thought we knew it was all about mutation changes in amino acids and the individual strains over time, but they take on new characteristics.”

With the onset of more common whole genome sequencing and recombination analysis, Dr. Calvert says there is another mechanism, and recombination seems to be a key factor.