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Blog

AGRICULTURE BUSINESS STRUCTURING AND WEALTH PLANNING

• The Crying Need for Farm Transition Planning
• Tax Savings Series Part 8 - Indiana Inheritance Tax, or One More Reason to Move to Florida
• Tax Savings Series Part 7 - Don’t Pay Any More Than You Have to or How to Stick It to the (Tax) Man
• Tax Savings Series Part 6 - Gift and Estate Taxed or Bilked, Bamboozled, and Bushwhacked
• Tax Savings Series Part 5 - "Indiana Property Tax Reform or Indiana Property Tax Fiasco"

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Library

AGRICULTURE BUSINESS STRUCTURING AND WEALTH PLANNING

• A Penny Saved: Business Planning and Wealth Preservation for Farmers

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What is succession planning?

A:

Succession planning is simply planning for the transition when you are no longer running the business. It is an obvious fact that at some point in the future, you will no longer be running your business. You will either die, become incapacitated or simply decide to do something else, but regardless at some point you will no longer be running your business. Like the ostrich, many of us apparently think that if we stick our head in thesand, and ignore this reality, it will go away. Thus, in the great majority of cases, the"succession" occurs without the "planning".

As we all know, the results of almost any endeavor are better if we have planned the endeavor than if we simply leave the results to chance. In fact, planning for a business transition is probably even more important than most of the other endeavors you have been involved in. In fact, most people have not planned for the succession of their business whether it be farming or any other business. The results of this have frequently been catastrophic, resulting in the failure of the business. Without proper planning, the new "decision maker" has not been properly trained, the business has not been structured to allocate decision making authority in the proper way (i.e., "non-farming" siblings may veto the decisions of the "farm operator" or estate tax requirements may cause the liquidation of business assets).

We will explore the nuances of transition planning in much greater depth as we go along, but the starting point is simply that succession planning involves a conscious, problem solving approach to the inevitable fact that no business is going to continue forever under the present operator. Therefore, it is wise to plan for this transition rather than simply trusting to luck, or pretending that it will never happen.

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