May, 2015
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USDA Announces New “Conservation Client Gateway”
One of the things most dreaded by almost everyone is the trip to the local DMV to get their driver’s license. You walk in the door grab #72 and realize that the current number is #48 and you have a long wait ahead of you. For most farmers, the trip to their local FSA office […]
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Open Year Tax Disclosure Footnotes No Longer Needed
Many of our farm operations prepare financial statements with footnotes. These are usually needed for their bank loans, but in many cases, the farm operation is large enough that they would like to provide good financial information to both their lenders and their owners (even if they are all family members). One of the requirements […]
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Another Reason to Not Get an IRS Tax Refund
As was widely reported over the last few days, the IRS had over 100,000 taxpayers information get “hacked”. I have had several clients get their identity stolen for income tax purposes over the last couple of years. This is a very painful process for both the taxpayer and myself as the preparer. Usually the taxpayer […]
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What is the Estimate on the 2014 MYA Price
There are two key data points that go into the ARC-CO calculations for the 2014 crop year. First, we have a fairly good estimate of the actual 2014 yield for most of the major crops from NASS. Although these are not final yields (only FSA posted yields will count for ARC-CO calculations), they give us […]
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Summer Seminar Series
For those farmers, bankers, attorneys and especially CPAs and accountants that need to get their professional hours in, I am personally inviting you to attend one of three summer seminars put on by The Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation (CALT). The first seminar will take place on Thursday and Friday June 11 and 12 […]
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April 18 (or 19), 2016 is Due Date for 2015 tax returns
The normal due date for federal individual, partnerships and trust income tax returns is April 15 of each year. However, when the due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or federal holiday, the due date becomes the next normal business day. Next year April 15 falls on a Friday and there are no federal holidays […]
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What Runs Through the Estate!
I got an email from a reader that other day and I will paraphrase it as follows: “My sisters and I sold some farmland in 20XX. This land had been in several trusts. A trust that was formed in 19XX when our grandfather passed away owned a portion of the land. Another two trusts; one for […]
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Crop and Livestock Producers are Opposites
The Kansas City Fed just released their latest Ag Credit Survey and it certainly highlights the contrast between financial conditions for crop and livestock producers. In their second chart of the report, it recapped the percentage of producers who indicate a significant improvement, modest improvement, no change, modest deterioration or significant detonation in conditions from […]
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Where’s Waldo (Paul)?
My children used to like to take a look at the books featuring “Where’s Waldo?”. My four boys would race to see who could find him first (they usually beat mom and dad to it too). Once I started doing more traveling, many of my staff will now ask “Where’s Waldo/Paul?”. So this post will […]
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“Cost don’t Matter, Except When it Does”
I seem to get an email on at least a monthly basis asking what “my cost basis is” when the person inherits property, usually farm land. The email usually goes into great detail about the cost basis of the property when it was originally acquired by their parents or grandparents and usually has very little […]