My family started Dressler Truck Service back in 1944 to help farmers haul crops. We bought our first grain elevator in 1988 and our second in 1996. We have built the business over time through hard work and trust. Now a glitch in the new tax bill is threatening to destroy it.
In a rush to preserve a tax break for farmer-owned cooperatives, Congress accidentally created a loophole that threatens the existence of independent businesses like the one I run. If Congress doesn’t fix it – and fix it soon, before the spring harvest really gets going – thousands of small businesses like mine could soon be filing for bankruptcy.
The problem stems from an effort to keep a deduction for farmer-owned cooperatives. The problem is that the people who wrote the bill accidentally made the deduction much bigger than they had ever intended to, allowing farmers to write off 20% of their total sales to farm cooperatives but not to independent operators like mine. Even the authors have admitted this was a mistake, but now Congress needs to fix it. And we all know how much trouble Congress has getting things done.
Now, this unintended loophole threatens businesses all over the country and could disrupt the supply chain for everything from milk and flour to ethanol and livestock. Without a fix, any business that isn’t a cooperative will lose customers. That will speed up all the consolidation we’re already seeing in the farming industry and give farmers fewer places to sell their products or competition to drive up the price. That’s not good for anyone.
Under the new law, farmers who sell their crops to a cooperative might be able to avoid paying taxes entirely. A farmer who sells $500,000 of grain to a cooperative and makes $100,000 in profit won’t have to pay taxes on any of that. That might seem like a good deal, but consider what it means for a business like mine. That same farmer would get a much smaller break, if he sells that grain to me. So, who is going to sell to us? No one. And what happens when we can’t buy any grain? We end up shutting our doors after 74 years. All because someone in Washington wrote something wrong.
I know a lot of farmers are eager to cash in on this new deduction, and I don’t blame them. Many of our longtime customers are looking to sell to someone else this year. They feel bad about it, but the tax law doesn’t give them any choice. And that’s the worst part of this mistake: It’s turning people against each other. Independent business owners like me who have bought grain or livestock or milk from their friends on farms for decades are now left out in the cold because of a missing word or two a big tax bill.
But I’m hopeful Congress will change it because those of us in farm country know what’s fair and what’s not, and even people who benefit from this unintended mistake are willing to change it because they know what it will do to businesses like mine. That’s the thing. We’re in this together. And most people seem to understand that if Congress doesn’t fix this, the problems will ripple through our entire community. My business might be the first to to, but eventually it will hurt the equipment dealers, the car deals and the local restaurants. This hurts everyone.
But I’ve always felt like those of us here in the farming sector were in this business together. If Congress doesn’t fix this, the problems are going to ripple through the entire economy of communities like mine, from the farmers to the local grain elevators to the equipment dealers to the local car dealers. This hurts everyone.
Thankfully, most people in Washington seem to acknowledge the mistake. Even the senators who inserted this change at the last-minute have promised to fix it so businesses like mine will continue to exist. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator, has said this problem must be corrected. He’s been telling reporters that Congress “screwed up” and that even co-ops know this has to be fixed. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has been saying the same thing.
I hope they’re right because I don’t want to be the one to watch my family business die. We’ve been at this for generations, and I take a lot of pride in running a business that has been in my families since the 1940s. That’s hard to do, and it makes me both sad and mad to think Congress could take that away just because someone made a mistake.
– Jason Dressler is the general manager of Dressler Truck Service in Freeburg, Ill.
Alerts Sign-up