Byron Dorgan: “I want to have considered several other pieces of tax law that I think are long overdue for consideration. This…”

“I want to have considered several other pieces of tax law that I think are long overdue for consideration. This particular amendment combines four ideas. One, we have a current problem with virtually all farmers in this country who are receiving income from their conservation reserve program acres. The Internal Revenue Service has now decided that income is from self-employment and therefore subject to self-employment tax. That is one of the goofiest interpretations of tax law I have ever heard, but nonetheless that is the IRS's position. They have the opportunity to make it stick unless we tell them that is not what we intended; that is not the way the law ought to be read. That is not the way Congress intended it, so we will legislate to tell the IRS how they ought to view this issue. It is clear that the conservation reserve program, for which the Federal Government gives payments to farmers for the retirement of certain acreage into conservation, is not self-employment income and therefore subject to self-employment taxes. Yet that is exactly the way the IRS has ruled. All farmers across this country are going to get caught in this web. We must fix it.”