July, 2011
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The Pacific NW Wheat Harvest is Late!
My wife and I rode our motorcycle from Yakima to Lewiston on Thursday with a stop in Walla Walla. Normally this time of year, wheat harvest would be in full throttle, however, I noticed very little harvesting going on that day. I visited with my Uncle and Aunt at their house on Thursday and spoke […]
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Frozen Garbanzo Beans to Hit the Market This Year
I grew up in the Walla Walla area and several farmers are now producing Garbanzo Beans on about a 1,000 acres for the fresh frozen market. Normally, garbanzo beans are held to maturity and harvested dry and then shipped around the world. The Middle East is a large consumer of these beans and in the US they are primarily used […]
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IRS Extends Time for Innocent Spoue Relief
The IRS in Notice 2011-70 has extended the time that an innocent spouse can request equitable relief from the current two year limitation to the amount time remaining under the statute of limitations for collection procedures. This is a very nice change from the IRS since they had recently won a couple of court cases […]
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John Deere to Fight For GPS
USA Today just ran an article on how John Deere is leading the fight against Lightsquared plans to put up more than 40,000 new cell towers in rural America. John Deere is worried that the spectrum that Lightsquared want to use will bump the GPS spectrum and lead to farmers having issues running their GPS […]
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Batman Was A Farmer!
I grew up on a wheat farm near Walla Walla, Washington and one of my next door neighbors was Batman, Adam West that is. As a young child, one of my favorite shows growing up was Batman (however, as I got older, the show got a little cheesier). Adam West, who was Batman, grew up […]
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A Switch in Farm Loan Levels
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City just published their National Trends in Farm Lending for the second quarter of this year. Due to the increase in input costs, operating loan levels have increased dramatically from the second quarter of 2010, up nearly 36%. The number of livestock loans dropped slightly from the year before, […]
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How Does Section 1231 Work?
We had a reader ask the following question: “I’m thinking about selling a tract of timber on land that was gifted to me 7 years ago. What can I expect the tax consequences to be? I’m a self-employed farmer.” We have done a couple of posts lately on capital gains treatment of the sale of […]
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What Is The Tax Rate On Gifted Equipment?
We had a reader ask the following question(s): “Paul, in regard to the capital gain question-we are in the process of purchasing a new corn planter. If we sell the old one for cash, how much will the capital gains tax be on it? 15% or normal income tax rate? It was gifted to us […]
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IRS Gives Three Month Extension to File Form 2290
We wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about the possible late filing of form 2290 to report the excise tax owed on semi-trucks owned by farmers for the period ended June 30, 2011. The IRS has just issued release 2011-77 indicating there is an automatic three month extension until November 30, 2011 to […]
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The Three Levels of Farm Accounting
I am going to hazard a guess that at least 90% of our farmers are in what I call the first level of farm accounting. This is the old tried and true favorite – Cash basis of accounting. Most farmers report farm net income on their tax return using this method of accounting. Income is […]