Political Quotes

“Michael Caudle's father founded the Greenfield Lumber Company in Greenfield, TN in 1955. Michael's dad and his granddad spent years building that business into the trusted, reliable family business that exists today. But when Michael's dad passed away 6 years ago in 2000, the business was put on the brink. The family at that time, all of a sudden, was forced to pay nearly $400,000 in death taxes and almost had to sell the business they had worked so hard to put together to pay the tax. Michael says he hopes to pass that lumber company on to his children and his grandchildren. It is his life. It is what he has worked for: to give them that sense of family pride and community, that pride and community that his dad had passed on to him. But like so many American families, his dream is threatened by what has come to be known in my State as the ``buzzard tax,'' and by people who don't see the value in preserving a hard-won family tradition, that name is appropriate. One Tennessee couple told my office they decided not to trust their fate to the tax man. They sold their east Tennessee car dealership so that if one of them were to die suddenly, the other one simply wouldn't have to pay those exorbitant taxes; that burden wouldn't fall on their shoulders. They didn't want that buzzard picking apart that dream that they had built together. Fred Heinecke's parents, unfortunately, didn't know about that kind of tax planning. As Mr.…”