Sponsors (30)
The bill preserves stepped-up basis to ease tax and liquidity burdens for heirs—especially for farms and family businesses—helping keep local operations intact, but does so at the cost of reduced tax progressivity, perceived unfairness, and lower federal revenue.
Heirs of farms and family small businesses can reset the inherited asset's cost basis to fair market value, reducing or eliminating immediate capital gains tax when they sell inherited property.
Maintains a tax rule that facilitates intergenerational transfer of farms and family businesses, supporting continuity of operations and the economic health of rural and local communities.
Reduces liquidity pressure on inheritors who might otherwise need to sell land, equipment, or firms to pay capital gains taxes immediately after inheriting.
Preserving stepped-up basis tends to favor asset-rich families and can entrench wealth across generations, weakening tax progressivity.
Allows large inheritances to avoid recognition of appreciation, creating perceived unequal tax treatment between heirs and people who sell assets during their lifetimes.
Reducing capital gains recognition at transfer can lower federal tax revenue, potentially worsening deficits or shifting the tax burden onto other taxpayers and public services.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Makes a nonbinding statement supporting the stepped-up basis tax rule and warns that eliminating it would harm family farms and small businesses.
Introduced March 10, 2025 by Tracey Mann · Last progress March 10, 2025
Expresses findings that the federal "stepped-up basis" rule (IRC §1014) allows heirs to reset an inherited asset's cost basis to its fair market value at death and says this rule is important for family farms and many small businesses. The resolution cites statistics about family ownership and an ERS study claiming many midsized farms would face higher tax bills without the rule, and it warns that removing the stepped-up basis could threaten intergenerational transfers of farms, ranches, agribusinesses, and small businesses. It is a statement of findings and does not itself change tax law or create new obligations.