Farm Industry Trends
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Start of the Midwest Crop Tour
We are at Columbus, Ohio for the start of the Midwest Crop Tour. Tonight, all of the scouts have a meeting to go over the ground rules for the tour. On the Eastern Leg will be 11 routes that cover the area from Columbus to Southern Minnesota. The Western Leg will cover Eastern South Dakota […]
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California is Out of Controll!
Since I practice in the state of Washington, I end up doing a fair amount of California business and personal tax returns. This is one of my least favorite states to deal with and a recent court case winding its way through the system highlights this even more. In Swart Enterprises, Inc. v. Franchise Tax […]
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MidWest Crop Tour
Just letting everyone know that I am leaving bright and early tomorrow morning to fly to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Chris Barron is picking me up at the airport and we are then headed to Columbus, Ohio. We will spend the night in Bloomington, Illinois (most likely) and then meet up with about 100 scouts in […]
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New IRS Website for Healthcare Provisions
The IRS has just released a new website that recaps and provides information on most of the Health Care Provisions of ObamaCare. Although we sometimes have issues with the IRS as preparers and farmers, I must admit that their website is one of the better sites on the internet. There is a lot of information […]
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The New Farm Bill
Mark Reisinger, the Global Grain Trade lead gave an update on the new farm bill this morning at the NextGen conference. With the House failing to pass a Farm Bill that included the nutrition program, we now have a Senate/House sub-committee working on a new Farm Bill. The Senate portion offers two programs based on […]
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Letting Go
Yesterday, I was in Des Moines, Iowa for a Pioneer Seed sponsored NextGen conference. This conference is for the younger generation of farmers who are presented ideas on how to grow their business. One of the sessions had three farmers from various parts of the country (Iowa, Texas and New Jersey) and one of the […]
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Don’t Forget Your Retirement (Plan)!
I get the following question at least three or four times a year from our clients: “I know my income is too high to contribute to an IRA, what other options are there?” When Congress put in the income limitations on IRA several years ago, there arose a misconception regarding the limit. Many people, including […]
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IRS Releases Draft Form For New Net Investment Income Tax
The IRS has finally released a draft of the new form 8960 to report the 3.8% net investment income tax for income in excess of the threshold amounts. As previously discussed in several posts, the 3.8% tax applies to the lesser of (1) your net investment income including cash rents or the amount in excess […]
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Is Peak Corn Over (For Now)?
A few years ago, the term Peak Oil was in the media. This term represented the notion that the production of oil worldwide had peaked and we would be showing lower and lower production levels each year. With the discovery of fracking of shale oil formations, this term is not used much lately. My question […]
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Hedge Accounting Update
The last presentation at FFSC was done by Todd Doehring of Centrec and myself on the proposed guidelines for hedge accounting. For tax purposes, a valid hedge is usually accounted for on a strictly realized basis, i.e., the futures or options on futures is not recognized in income until the hedge is closed out. For […]