Inheritance Tax Is Seen as an Insult

“Foster Farms Agrees to Buy Zacky’s Chicken Business” [April 4] reports that Zacky Farms is being forced to sell the 76-year-old family business to pay inheritance taxes. If nothing else, this proves the lie of the mantra that cutting or eliminating inheritance taxes “only benefits the rich.”

Zacky is the second-largest chicken producer in California. They are selling out to Foster Farms, which is the largest chicken producer in the state--and will become even bigger. If you ask me, that benefits the rich more than cutting Zacky’s inheritance taxes.

Further, the sale is expected to run into antitrust trouble.

To those of us who work all our lives to accumulate security for our families, it is an insult for our heirs to have to sell that security in order to assuage the government’s greed.

My now 80-year-old father began a small business in 1964. I work for that business and it is the only job I have ever had. When my parents die, I will have to sell the business, which, even though it is not worth much, has assets that exceed the “inheritance tax-free” limits. I will then have to go on unemployment and/or look for another job for the first time in my life. Neither my parents nor I are anywhere near being rich. Quite the reverse.

Where is the logic in all of this?

RAUL BLACKSTEN

Maywood