Policy and Legal

Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA), the vice chair of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Rural America Tax Team, is working to shield family businesses across America from damaging tax burdens by targeting the estate tax for repeal.

As part of the NAM’s “Manufacturing Wins” campaign, which aims to protect pro-manufacturing provisions from 2017 tax reform set to expire in 2025, the NAM spoke with Rep. Feenstra about his work and why it matters to manufacturers. 

Nixing the tax: Tax reform doubled the valuation threshold under which family-owned businesses’ assets are exempt from the estate tax. While Rep. Feenstra is working to prevent that increased threshold from expiring, he has a bigger goal in sight: repealing the estate tax altogether.

• Feenstra is the sponsor of the Death Tax Repeal Act, which “makes the simple recognition that death should not be a taxable event,” he told us.
• “When a family is grieving, the federal government sends a multimillion-dollar tax bill as condolences. This is simply wrong.”

Listening to owners: Rep. Feenstra and his colleagues on the tax team have spoken to family businesses across the country, including manufacturers. These conversations have made it clear that “we still have a lot of work to do to provide relief from what can be a devastating setback for multigenerational family businesses,” he said.

• “Repealing this tax is going to be one of my top priorities in 2025, and I’m proud to have the support of 170 of my colleagues,” he added.

Persecuting small business: As Rep. Feenstra explains, the estate tax often threatens to destroy small manufacturers, whose value is often tied up in illiquid assets like equipment and facilities.

• “People often don’t realize that businesses over many generations can accumulate assets that can put them over the asset threshold, but that doesn’t mean these businesses have a lot of cash on hand,” he explained. “So, when they’re hit with millions in new taxes, that can sink an already cash-strapped business.”
• “Fortunately, because of the doubling of exemption amount, far fewer businesses face that threat,” he added. However, “As long as any family business does face that threat, we still have work to do.”

If tax reform expires… Rep. Feenstra warns that if tax reform’s estate tax changes expire, many additional smaller businesses will suffer.

• “A lot more people would be hit by the death tax, and the people who are hit would be paying a much higher tax,” he said.
• “These are small family businesses we are talking about, and if the current exemption amount is allowed to return to half its current value, that means the size of the businesses getting hit are much smaller than they are today.”

The last word: “As we go into 2025, we need to be focused on policies that support growth and help [family-owned] businesses succeed, not create costly obstacles for them to overcome,” Rep. Feenstra concluded. 

Learn more: You can read our full Q&A with Rep. Feenstra here and learn more about the NAM’s “Manufacturing Wins” tax campaign at NAM.org/MfgWins.