In 1915, L.A. Tart bought a very small lumber mill in North Carolina for $400. Over the years, the mill burned down more than once. L.A. Tart not only re-built each time, he expanded the business. In 1926, his son, Clarence Lee Tart, bought the business from his father and continued expanding the operation, this time into cotton and tobacco. His son, C.L. Tart, Jr., started working in the business as a teenager, during the summers as his dad once had, and eventually ran the company after his father passed away in 1964. C.L.'s son, Clarence L. Tart III, followed the path of his father and grandfather -- working during the summers as he grew up, then full-time once he was out of school -- and is now Vice President of Tart & Tart, Inc.
The Tart family has paid a death tax to the federal government three times: at the time of L.A.'s death, Clarence Lee's death, and again after Clearance's wife's death. C.L. Jr. is now 62 and is trying desperately to protect his 34-year-old son from the fear he faced when his father died. "When my father died, friends tried to comfort me, saying hang in there, it will get better. But at the same time, I had Uncle Sam breathing down my neck. I had to sell a tobacco warehouse and some other property to pay the Death Tax. I had to furnish an IRS agent with an office for six months until he could come up with the astronomical amount of tax we owed. It was the scariest time of my life. No one should have to live with that kind of fear."
Even at the toughest time of his life, C.L. and his family were giving back to their community through jobs and philanthropy. They donated ten acres of land to their town in their father's memory. The Clarence Lee Tart Municipal Park has a number of softball fields and is the community recreation center. Tart & Tart currently employs about 70 people.
If C.L. tart died today, his heirs would owe the federal government $1.5 million. But how could his son pay that when he only earns $31,000 a year? Clarence L. Tart III would have to liquidate portions of the business and eliminate the jobs that go with them. C.L. has not been able to expand his business or create any new jobs in the past few years because he has had to pull capital from his operations to cover legal fees, insurance costs, and trustee costs -- all in hopes of putting together a plan that will offset the death taxes his son will eventually have to pay. There are years when the profits of Tart & Tart are less than the cost of this protection.
C.L.'s sister, who owns half of Tart & Tart, is selling it to her nephew to spare the business from the death tax when she dies. Each month, Clarence L. Tart III makes a payment to his aunt out of his $31,000 salary, slowly buying the business that should be his legacy, his family's American Dream ... not his American nightmare.
While raising only about 1 percent of annual federal tax revenues, the death tax wrecks havoc on family business and farms, entrepreneurship and our nation's international competitiveness. As C.L. Tart puts it, the solution is simple: "eliminate the death tax."
