July, 2011
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Wheat Market Update with a Northwest Bent
The Northwest Farm Credit Services has just posted a nice four page summary of winter and spring wheat conditions in the Pacific Northwest. This growing region includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The region has been especially cool and wet this spring with most typical harvest delays of at least two weeks. Stripe rust appears […]
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Estimate Your Monthly Social Security Benefit
The Social Security Administration has a nice retirement calculator on their website that will project what your monthly social security benefit will be if you retire at: Normal retirement age (for most of us this will be somewhere between age 66 and 67), Age 70, and Age 62 The calculator takes into account your current […]
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Think Savings Account for Partner’s Capital Account
In almost 30 years of being a CPA, I have found partnership taxation to be one of the most complicated areas of taxation, both for other CPA’s and for clients. Partnerships involve both inside and outside basis, step-up or down in cost basis for certain transactions and many other compilations that are not there with […]
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Expect Filing Delays of Form 2290 for Many Farmers
The IRS has indicated in a couple of announcements (most recent one here) that the form 2290 excise tax return for the year beginning July 1, 2011 and ending June 30, 2012 and for the quarter beginning the same date will be delayed for some unknown time. As was with the new tax laws passed […]
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Dying Days of Ethanol Subsidies?
The Wall Street Journal in today’s paper had a good article on how ethanol subsidies are even closer to being eliminated. Under the proposed deficit-reduction plan proposed on Thursday, the 45 cents a gallon blenders credit would be eliminated, however, more than $600 million of aid would be given to service stations to help promote […]
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Mexico to End Tariffs on Fruit and Other Ag Products
There is an old saying that when politics gets involved, farming can suffer. One of the prime examples of this was issue of allowing Mexican truckers to bring products into the US by truck which was allowed for several years. However, politics got involved a few years ago and the US stopped this and Mexico […]
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Watch For The State Tax Grab!
Most farmers enjoy certain state tax exemptions that are not always available to other businesses in that state. For example, in my state of Washington, almost all businesses pay a state Business and Occupation (B&O) tax based upon gross sales. As a CPA, our firm pays a 1.8% tax on all of our services performed in […]
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Extra Year for “Prairie Pothole States”
The USDA announced on Thursday, June 30, 2011 that the “Prairie Pothole States” of Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa will have one extra year to use in their prevented planting insurance coverage. Normally, the prevented planting coverage insurance requires one crop in the last three years. In these states, for many farmers, […]
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Check Your FUTA Wages
I never thought I would write a post on FUTA (Federal Unemployment) taxes, but here I go. The original FUTA tax rate was 6% with an up to 5.4% credit for taxes paid to your state. Starting in 1976, Congress had tacked on a surtax of .2% for a gross FUTA rate of 6.2%. This […]
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What’s Your RLU?
A farm enterprise must be able to generate enough revenue and net income to support at least one farm family which I call a “living unit”. A farm operation should calculate how much revenue the farm generates each year and divide that both by the number of full-time equivalent employees (FTE) and “living units”. To […]