“[An] individual came up, introduced himself to me and said, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’” McEowen recalls. “He said, ‘Well, it was about 25 years ago. We came to you through extension at K-State and we had a real tough situation in our farming operation. It was looking like we weren’t going to be able to do a successful intergenerational transfer.’”

Ultimately, that wasn’t the case thanks to some resources provided by McEowen. With the help of a team of advisors who pointed the family in the right direction, 25 years later that farm is flourishing.

It can be a slightly awkward conversation, Good admits, but asking what a family would like the operation to look like in 50 or 100 years can help point the conversation in a positive direction.

McEowen goes slightly further by suggesting producers consider the big picture and what they would like their family situation to be like in terms of their business. Once those goals are established, transition planners are able to zoom out and establish a path to reaching those end points.

“That’s been my approach to teaching law students and undergraduates over the years. Let’s go to the back of the chapter first … Where are we going with this? We’ll talk about that for a bit and then we’ll go back to the beginning and say, ‘OK, now let’s look at the rules that actually get us there,’” McEowen notes. “That’s the approach I think people should come at estate planning with.”

Changing tax implications

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act  is a hefty bill. More than 900 pages, according to McEowen. The important thing, he says, is that the bill has a lot of tax provisions beneficial to farmers and ranchers.

“It’s almost frightening to think where we would be at economically — and for our ag producers specifically — if the bill had not passed,” McEowen notes. “We avoided a major tax increase for many, many people.”

Of particular importance, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act  retained [the qualified business income deduction], which offers a 20% deduction on your business income if you’re not a C corporation. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Congress had permanently reduced the corporate tax to a flat 21% across the board from the graduated rate brackets that C corporations had to pay. The qualified business income deduction was the trade-off and would have expired at the end of 2025 if it weren’t for the bill.

Another big win for farmers and ranchers facing intergeneration transition in the future? A healthy estate tax exemption, says McEowen.

“We got an estate tax exemption at $15 million and then adjusted for inflation starting next year. So that’s $30 million for a married couple. That would’ve been cut basically in half had the bill not passed,” he says, while pointing out that if the Fall 2024 elections had shaken out differently, this would be a much different story. “We could [have been] looking at a $3.5 million exemption with only a $1 million basis step-up at death. That would have been devastating to small businesses, particularly farms and ranches.”

A few more high points include a new senior deduction that, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, removes social security tax for about 88% of recipients as well as the reinstatement of a 1986 tax act that allows for deducting interest on a personal car loan [or] a new vehicle, McEowen shares.

On the depreciation side of things, producers got a 100% bonus depreciation reinstated on a retroactive basis.

“We’ve got, in essence, a doubling of Section 179 depreciation. So the fast methods of depreciation are there,” says McEowen. “I think we’re already seeing the economy and businesses take these provisions into account when you look at some of the official government numbers and surveys that have been put out … I could go on and on, but I think our listeners get the point. This is a very, very significant bill with lots of economic-related provisions in it that are good for all taxpayers and good for agriculture in general.”

Editor’s note: The information above is summarized from the March 25, 2026, episode of Angus at Work. To access the full episode — including more information on tax implications and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — check out our Angus at Work archive on www.angus.org. [Lead photo by DNY59, E+ via Getty Images..]

Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 18, No. 4-A