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Passing on the family business can also mean passing on a big tax bill, and family-owned manufacturers are speaking out to keep those bills from getting any bigger. 

What’s happening: As part of its “Manufacturing Wins” campaign to preserve 2017 tax reform, the NAM is calling on Congress to secure the law’s changes to the estate tax.

• Tax reform increased the estate tax exemption threshold, which protects some of a family-owned business’s assets from the tax.
• The threshold is set to be slashed in half at the end of 2025, subjecting more of family-owned manufacturers’ assets to taxation and making it harder for them to pass their business on to the next generation.

Protecting physical assets: Manufacturers constantly invest in physical assets like facilities and machinery to stay competitive, making the estate tax especially damaging.

• “We’re not a liquid company,” said Tom Tredway, president of Erie Molded Packaging in Pennsylvania. “Almost every penny we earn is poured back into our business so we can grow and compete. The increased estate tax exemption threshold is set to expire at the end of 2025, which will threaten my ability to pass the business on to my children.”
• “The estate tax doesn’t just hurt family businesses—it hurts the workers,” added Scott Livingston, president and CEO of HORST Engineering in East Hartford, Connecticut. “It also hurts our customers and the communities that we serve.”

Preserving company values: For Click Bond, a family-owned adhesives manufacturer in Carson City, Nevada, paying a higher estate tax bill could mean compromising the business’s vision and values.

• “We may have become a family business by happenstance, but we remain one by strategy,” said CEO Karl Hutter. “With reduced lifetime estate tax exemptions, family businesses will face the threat of having to liquidate, divest or take in outside capital that may not align with their strategy or values simply to create liquidity to pay a tax bill.”
• “The estate tax rips financial resources from productive organizations,” said Dave True of the 76-year-old True Companies in Casper, Wyoming. “These financial resources are critical to small companies and the families they support.”

Saving livelihoods: For some families, the estate tax threatens to turn a death in the family into the death of the business.

• “When I lost my husband to brain cancer, not only did I have to worry about keeping the business afloat, but I also had to worry about a looming tax bill that might have forced us to halt production altogether,” said Courtney Silver, president and owner of Ketchie, Inc. in Concord, North Carolina.
• Silver, who chairs the NAM’s Small and Medium Manufacturers Group, continued: “If not for the federal estate tax exemption being increased in 2017, Ketchie might not be here today.”

The last word: Lori Miles-Olund, the third-generation owner and president of Miles Fiberglass & Composites, Inc. in Clackamas, Oregon, put it simply: “Congress must preserve the increased estate tax exemption to protect family-owned businesses like ours from potential insolvency when the owner passes away.”