Farm Industry Trends
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Don’t Forget the “Magic Blurb” on Donation Acknowledgements!
We came across this blog from the Internet and it is a great reminder for all of us that will be getting charity donation acknowledgements between now and when we file your tax return. In order to claim a charity donation, you must get a written acknowledgement from the charity and retain in your files […]
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Late Tax Filing and Wrong Form 1099!
Not only will most farmers have to file after March 1, 2013 due to a delay in tax forms by the IRS, we now have an announcement that almost all form 1099s issued by the USDA for Natural Resources Conservation Services payments in 2012 are either wrong or were never issued. The expected mailing date […]
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Yes! You Can Write Off That New Machine Shop (At Least 50%)
We got the following question from a reader: “I built a new farm workshop in 2012, can i take 1/2 of the cost off and depreciate the rest over time? I read something regarding bonus depreciation on workshops and was wondering if this qualifies?” Bonus depreciation was placed into the tax laws as a result […]
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Farmer Filing Due Date Update
As most of our readers know, the IRS has extended the March 1 farmer filing deadline to April 15, 2013 for those farmers who MISS the March 1 deadline. One of the major forms that farmers were waiting for was Form 4565 – Depreciation which was released yesterday. However, there are still several forms that will […]
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Crop Insurance Proceeds on Feed Consumed by Livestock
We received the following question(s) from a reader: “My husband and I received crop insurance proceeds this year due to drought. It was for hay and pasture losses. The insurance company classifies the crop as “forage”. If this was hay we would normally feed to our cows in the following year may we defer this […]
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What Will be The February Insurance Price
February sets the price level for crop insurance on Corn, Beans and some of the other major crops. Last year’s spring price was $5.68 for corn and $12.55 for beans. We have had 4 trading days for this month out of 20 total and so far the average corn price is $5.89 and the average […]
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Even Entertainment Weekly Thinks Farmers are Cool
Dodge ran a 2 minute commercial during the Super Bowl utilizing the Paul Harvey “On the 8th Day God created Farmers”. I thought it was one of the best commercials during the game and Entertainment Weekly thought the same thing. It was very well done and we just wanted to say how proud we are […]
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Hedging Versus Speculation
We got the following question from a reader today: “I was wondering how to handle the purchase of corn options on your tax return?” The answer is one of those “It depends” type answer. If the farmer is purchasing an option for speculation, i.e. he purchases a corn call option, then he falls under the […]
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Many States Are Delaying Farmer Filing Deadline
As discussed in a couple of other posts, the IRS has extended the farmer filing deadline from March 1, 2013 to April 15, 2013 for those farmers who “miss” the March 1 deadline. We are starting to see various states follow suit as follows: Indiana Iowa Minnesota Nebraska West Virginia Some states base their filing deadline […]
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The Board is Not What it Used to Be!
Today was the first day of the Top Producer Conference. The first session was very interesting. Dr. Tom Deans, author of Every Family’s Business gave a talk on how many farmers really should be looking at “selling” the farm instead of “gifting” the farm. Too many times, the gift of the farm ends up creating […]