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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

Actually, in North Dakota it is a family farm since we specifically outlaw corporate farms. $5 million when the combine (or some tractors if renting the combines) is a $1 million plus some storage bins and the per acre cost of farmland is not a big farm. So, in the traditional sense, farming is really easy to tax infrastructure activity. That is why that tax is so hated. Farms are damn expensive.

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Is it something specific to farming?

How is that different from, for example, $5,000,000 to buy a lot, build a gym, and stock it with equipment?

Don't know, never really talked to a gym owner before, but my suspicion is that it probably is a huge problem for anyone who builds up assets (that a tax person values highly) to do the job but not a lot of actual cash to pay the taxes. I think land or infrastructure intensive activities are probably all in the same boat.

I'm pretty sure other millionaires hate taxes too.

Millionaire only when the tax man comes calling is quite a bit different than Silicon Valley millionaire after an IPO.

It sounds to me like the problem here is the specific combination of the state statute requiring farms to be owned by families and the federal estate tax. If so, it seems that there are multiple ways to solve this problem without wholesale repeal of the tax.

Nobody wanted the estate tax to mean "the government gets 10% of Wal-Mart when Sam Walton dies". If that's the outcome that results in some cases, then fix that problem.

Fixing the problem is pretty simple, repeal the tax. Its unseemly to tax a person when they die. Just the adding of grief (which I have recently experienced) is something we should not do to people. Plus, the continuing of this tax makes it hard for new family businesses (and a lot of minority owned family businesses are new) to build up like the incumbents were allowed.

You've shifted your argument to one that is not particularly convincing to someone who doesn't already share a right wing economic view.

The North Dakota farm issue was interesting, as something I wasn't aware of (and thank you for bringing it up!) I'm less interested in engaging with the general libertarian argument against taxation.

There's no a priori reason that property rights should survive a person's death, and plenty of arguments against allowing hereditary accumulation of wealth. Note also that currently the first $5.5 million is exempt, which is more than enough for the vast majority of individuals and even quite a few small businesses.

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