Death tax could mean end for fifth-generation rancher

I am the owner of a ranch that has been in my family for five generations. If current trends continue, I'll be the last in that line. My family's way of life is threatened by the death tax. My great-great-grandfather was a rags-to-riches pioneer. In the late 1860s, James Clayton Stribling Sr., son of an immigrant from England, moved from his birthplace in Tennessee to Texas. Arriving with little more than the shirt on his back, he began leasing land to graze cattle. Stribling gradually increased his ranch land by buying small tracts from neighbors. Over the course of his lifetime, he bought several thousand acres. When he died, the land then went to his children. His children continued the ranching tradition and passed it on to their five children, including my grandmother. It is with my grandmother that my family first discovered the death tax. When she died in 1997, the Internal Revenue Service handed my father an invoice of 38.5 percent minus a small deduction, on the appraised value of the land — the land that her grandfather had worked so hard to purchase, protect and work. As is the case with so many ranchers, her estate didn't have many liquid assets or a large amount of cash with which he could pay the debt. His only choice was to sell or take a loan. He took the largest loan available and, even then, was forced to sell several thousand acres. Fast forward to the summer of 2006. My father began to get ill and so we began planning his estate. We put together an army of attorneys, CPAs and tax planners in hopes of avoiding the tax burden my grandmother's estate left. Alas, our hope in tax-shelter magic was not to be realized...Austin American-Statesman