Farm Operations
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Watch Your P’s & Q’s on Section 179
Joe Kristan of Roth & Company, a CPA firm in Des Moines, Iowa writes a very good blog on income taxes and in one of his more recent posts, he recaps a case (Thomann TC Memo 2010-241) where a farmer attempted to take Section 179 on equipment that was leased to their farm corporation. During 2004, […]
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How to Transfer Equipment to Multiple Parties
One of our readers had the following question: “I am slowing down farming. understand can gift 13000 a year in machinery value each to my son, his wife and his son. What records and paper work do I need for this? Do I need equipment appraised? Does this allow me to take this equipment off […]
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Can You Not Report an Expense on Your Tax Return?
We got a question from a reader today asking if you they are required to report a deduction on their income tax return. I would normally post a copy of the question here, but the details associated with this question makes that impractical. In brief, the farmer originally reported $2,000 of interest expense as interest […]
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Feed Your Harvest Crew and Deduct the Meals
We got this question from one of our readers and it would apply to almost any farmer who hires a harvest or planting crew: “Hi Paul, I was wondering how taxes work on food bought for workers. On our family farm we have a couple part time hired hands who work 200-300 hours a year […]
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Farm Exports May Hit Record for 2010/11
I just read an article in the most recent issue of BloombergBusinessWeek magazine that had some interesting facts and comments. First, for the first 8 months of 2010, farm exports are up by 14% to about $ 70 billion and this is before the recent increase in prices. Second, it is estimated that China will […]
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Volatility – Is it Your Friend of Enemy?!
Another nugget of information that I got out of the speech by Dr. Boehlje of Purdue University on Wednesday is that accordingto their studies at the school, the volatility associated with agriculture has gone up by 400% in the last few years. This means that the price swings in ag commodities is now 4 times greater than […]
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Lock in Low Rates Now!
Dr. Michael Boehlje, a farm economics professor at Purdue University spoke at out opening day of the National Ag conference of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (I know that is a mouthful). He gave a 4 plus hour presentation on the agricultural economy both currently and insights into the future. One of the […]
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When is a Deposit Income?
I will be at the annual American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Ag Convention in Denver today till Friday. I hope to come away some ideas for our farmers. We had a reader ask the following question: “Can you hold checks that have been sent to us for grain sold in 2010 until 2011?” The […]
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How to Allocate Land Purchase?
We received the following questing regarding our post on the allocation of land purchase to vineyard AVA: “Paul, You cover depreciating improvements on land. I am buying 150 acres in north-central Iowa that is bare ground. It has two county main tile lines running through it, has a blacktop road on one side and a […]
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Dynamic Live Budgeting – Update
I have gotten a few requests on if there is software out there that will handle a dynamic live budget for farmers. What I have found so far that works the best is to use an Excel spreadsheet. I have reviewed a couple of budgeting programs that are for me simply to complicated to work […]