After struggling through the worst year of his agriculture career, John Paul Brooks got smoked with a tax bill from hell. His 2025 farm shop assessment skyrocketed 400% in a single year from roughly $10,000 to $50,000.
“Robbery,” says Brooks, owner of Brooks Custom Applications in Houston, Mississippi. “If you think they don’t abuse small businesses, then my story says otherwise. They make sure we own nothing.”
Tax Hell, Bureaucratic Heaven
Since 2017, Brooks has leased to own a 100’ by 100’ farm shop in Sunflower County, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. In 2025, Brooks switched the “business personal tax” from the previous owner to his company, Brooks Custom Applications.
Following the change, the county tax assessor’s office sent a contracted official to Brooks’ shop to take stock. Brooks estimated the assessment would be in the ballpark of past years—a range of $10,000-$12,000. Instead, he received sledgehammer surprise. The new annual tax tab was $50,980.32, going beyond machinery to include a DVD player, plastic chairs, wooden desk, shelves, grease gun, microwave, and more.
“I thought it was an error. A mistake. Then I started looking at the list of items and they’d taxed me on literally anything inside the building. Plastic table, ladder, wooden shelves, television, broken DVD player, and so on. I’m talking a 20-year-old air compressor, grinder, and grease gun. It was everything at the property, excluding the land and shop itself. They would’ve taxed me on the commode and sink, but those were attached to the building.”
Brooks, 44, was incensed. Mirroring the overall agriculture economy, Brooks Custom Applications, with a footprint in three states, already was mired in the toughest stretch of its 20-year history. Starting with six sprayers/spreaders in 2003, Brooks bootstrapped to build the company to an 800,000-acre footprint with 40 machines.
And then came 2025. Commodity market freefall compounded by a torrential sequence of ill-timed, spring rains resulted in a 40% acre reduction. The result for Brooks? In August 2025, a precipitous plunge from 800,000 acres to 500,000 triggered Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
“That was all in the background. I was just trying to survive and suddenly I was facing a crazy $50,000 tax bill for a single shop. I protested and asked county officials what was going on, but they told me there’d be no changes. They just said that’s the way it was.”
“We don’t make the law, we just have to abide by it,” says Cynthia Chandler, Sunflower County tax assessor. “I know it may not seem fair, but I don’t agree with every law that has been written myself.”
“We have to do what the law says and that’s a lot of farm equipment,” echoes Renee Upton, Sunflower County deputy tax assessor. “Everything that’s in there under personal property law is taxable … If somebody sent me a $50,000 tax bill, I would be shocked too. But again, we’re doing what the law says that we have to do, whether we agree with it or not.”
Tax hell and bureaucratic heaven are the same place from Brook’s perspective. Sunflower County is $3.1 million in the hole due to business closures, and Brooks believes his tax bill is indicative of county officials unwilling to use “common sense” interpretations of the law.
“They can hide behind regulations, codes, and laws, but other counties don’t pressure small businesses to this degree,” Brooks describes. “They’re over $3 million in debt and businesses are leaving, but they double-down.
“The system is crooked and corroded, in my opinion. They make damn sure you never truly own anything.”
Cutting Off Arms
Why the giant tax jump from past years of approximately $10,000 to precisely $50,980.32 in 2025?
By the letter of the law, Brooks owed 3% on every item in the shop, after paying 7% sales tax to purchase each item.
“Say you buy a $100,000 piece of farm machinery. That means you pay 7% sales tax or $7,000 up front. Then, the county, for as many years as you own it, taxes you annually at 3% or $3,000. And it can never, never depreciate below $20,000—even 50 years later. That means you pay for your equipment over and over. And think about the long-term taxes on a $600,000 John Deere sprayer. Or a $1 million piece of equipment.”
“By law, the county can come in and do the same thing to your screwdriver, radio, and grease gun. By law, the county can come in and break your business by nickel-and-diming you to death. By law, they can tax you dry, but that doesn’t make it right. I’ve never encountered anything to this degree, except in Sunflower County.”
In comparison, at Brooks’ shop location in Tennessee, the difference is extreme. “I pay zero in Tennessee. Zero. In that state, custom application is treated like farming and everything else. They want your business in Tennessee.”
In Mississippi, farmers, loggers, and crop dusters don’t pay 7% out the door, Brooks notes. They pay 1.5% in equipment-related sales tax, and are on the legislative cusp of sales tax elimination on specialized machinery.
“I don’t qualify for any of it,” Brooks explains. “Why? I’m a custom applicator business. Even though I generate and make 100% percent of my income from agriculture, I get no exemption. If I buy a new $600,000 sprayer, then I pay $42,000 sales tax and that’s a major competitive disadvantage. It means covering more acres to offset the tax.”
Sunflower County’s insistence on a $50,000-plus business personal tax will force Brooks to leave, he continues. “Think about the insanity of it. I’ve still got to pay the property tax on the building and land. After it’s all said and done, they expect me to pay a whole package of $60,000 to $70,000. That leaves me with no choice but to go.”
Chandler says businesses frequently leave Sunflower County. “It happens all the time. I mean, people move all the time from Sunflower County to other counties. Wherever they move, they’re going to be assessed property.”
However, across his career, Brooks says he’s never dealt with such tight tax interpretations.
“It’s not right to push taxes to the absolute highest level possible. We all know this kind of thing happens across the country to small business, and I’ve had my fill. What does our government, at a federal and state level, do when it has a deficit? They don’t cut their own arms off, they start cutting ours.”
Pound of Flesh
Big business boosted and small business hammered, Brooks insists.
“Across the nation, if a big business comes to town, the state and the county get together and they give them tax credits and waive all the taxes that they’d otherwise pay, just like we see with AI data centers. Big business has the power to negotiate on the front end, but a small business has to shut up and pay.”
Beyond Sunflower County, the tax powers claimed at both state and federal levels wildly exceed the Constitution or the framers’ intentions, Brooks warns.
“The scary part is we’re only one law or tax amendment away from government officials coming to your house to tax your couch and TV, just like they tax small business. What’s to stop them in the future when the state needs money from going in your home and taxing the recliner you sit in? Think about it: At my business, they already tax my couches and chairs.”
Tax officials, Brooks says, always wants a pound of flesh from small business.
“Just, for example, go buy a $1,000 item, and you’ll pay around 7% sales tax. Then, you start paying around 3% per year for owning it. I have a 20-year-old air compressor, so it’s had a 67% tax over the 20 years. That means I’ve paid $1,670 for it so far. We pay 30% on our income, 7% tax when we spend our income, and 3% per year to own whatever we buy. Sound reasonable?”
In the meantime, Brooks faces a $50,980.32 bill and a decision to pull stakes. “The average person doesn’t realize how much small businesses get taxed and how tax officials operate,” he adds. “It’s called killing the working man.”
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer
Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust
Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing
