'Almost no working farmers [pay the estate tax], according to data from an Internal Revenue Service

Sirotablog: CLAIM vs. FACT: Bush on the Estate Tax: "

CLAIM:
'For the sake of family farmers, Congress needs to get rid of the death tax forever.'
- President Bush, 6/14/05

FACT:
'Almost no working farmers [pay the estate tax], according to data from an Internal Revenue Service analysis of 1999 returns that has not yet been published. Neil Harl, an Iowa State University economist whose tax advice has made him a household name among Midwest farmers, said he had searched far and wide but had never found a farm lost because of estate taxes. 'It's a myth,' he said. Even one of the leading advocates for repeal of estate taxes, the American Farm Bureau Federation, said it could not cite a single example of a farm lost because of estate taxes.'
- NY Times, 4/8/01"