The Taxpayer Relief Act, estate planning, and resource mobility in US agriculture

Agricultural resources tend to be owned by individuals in the later stages of their economic life. If older agricultural resource owners tend to use r esources less productively than younger owners, then much of the resource b ase in agriculture maybe inefficiently employed. This article argues that U .S. capital taxation laws may be partly responsible for resource immobility . Capital gains taxation tends to reduce resource mobility, as does the fam ily business estate tax exemption. The 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act could exace rbate the immobility problem.