By Chuck Collins/Common Dreams
Kip Tom, the Leesburg Indiana farmer who appeared last week with President Trump complaining about the federal estate tax, cashed over $3.3 million in farm subsidy checks, including $2.6 million between 2004 and 2014, the most recent data available.
Kip Tom and Tom Farms is one of the biggest corn and soybean producers in Indiana and the 9th-largest farm subsidy recipient in Indiana.
Arriving at a total for Tom Farms subsidies required examining subsidies to three different ownership entities, as the farm went from individual ownership to an LLC in roughly 1995 and then formed Tom Farms Partners in 2004.
Between 2004 and 2014, Tom Farms Partners received $2,612,561 in subsidies, mostly commodity subsidies. Between 1996 and 2006, Tom Farms LLC cashed $667,732 in farm subsidy checks. In 1995, Kip Tom took in $42,826, but then refunded $17,494 for a net of $25,332. Between 1995 and 2014, this equals over $3,305,625 in government subsidies,
About 41 percent of Indiana farmers do not receive any subsidies, according to the USDA.
The federal estate tax is a levy on the intergenerational transfer of immense wealth. The tax only applies to households with more than $11 million in assets.
In Indiana, where President Trump kicked off his anti-estate tax campaign, fewer than one in 1,000 estates are subject to the estate tax, a grand total of only 70 people, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Republicans have been using farmers and ranchers for decades to justify estate tax repeal. I have written extensively about the history of using farmers as the face of estate tax repeal, instead of the billionaires and multi-millionaires who actually pay the tax, going back to 2000.
SOURCES
From the Environmental Working Group Farm Subsidy Database:
* All three Tom Farms entities combined received $3.3 million in subsidies, which would place them number 9 on this list of biggest subsidy recipients.
* Data on subsidies to Tom Farm Partners, 2004-2014.
* Information about 1996-2005, Tom Farms LLC Direct subsidies.
* Direct 1995 farm subsidy to Kip Tom.
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Posted on October 5, 2017