Farm Industry Trends
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Nice Dairy Margin Management Dashboard
The University of Illinois issues a daily “farmdoc” and today’s release was a nice dashboard for dairy farmers to determine how much margin protection they could have received if the margin protection program had been around since 2000. The dairy farmer can plug in their elected coverage levels; the amount of protection they want (from $4 […]
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Updated Average Marketing Prices 2013/14
The USDA releases updated prices on almost all major (and many minor) commodity crops at the end of each month. The latest report was released today. Since ARC will be based upon the average price received by farmers for their crop for the marketing year, we can take these monthly reports and obtain an average price […]
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Partial Taxpayer Victory on Horse Farm Case
In the Merrill C. Roberts cased just released by the Tax Court today, the taxpayer ended up with a partial victory in another horse farm case. Mr. Roberts, started a restaurant in 1969, had it burn down in several months after opening, and then used the insurance proceeds to open a bar in 1972. The […]
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Trusts, Capital Gains and the Net Investment Income Tax
As has been previously discussed in several posts, the highest tax rate for 2013 was raised from 35% to 39.5% and the highest capital gains tax was also raised from 15% to 20%. Obamacare also implemented a new complicated 3.8% surtax on net investment income in excess of certain thresholds. The thresholds are as follows […]
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House Ways & Means Committee Votes to Make $500,000 Section 179 Permanent!
The House Ways and Means Committee approved today six tax extenders including making Section 179 permanent at the $500,000 level. There are an additional 50 or so extenders that this committee will review and vote on. It is good news that the committee voted on Section 179 at this level, however, this is just at […]
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ARC Versus PLC – 2014-2018
We have gotten several questions regarding which program is better – ARC or PLC. There is no one right answer to this question since there are so many unknown variables. However, I decided to run out the numbers for corn, soybeans and wheat assuming certain crop marketing prices for each year. For corn, I elected […]
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Are You Still Running Windows XP?!
Windows XP has been around for over a decade now and I am fairly certain that many farmers are still using this as their desktop operating system. Microsoft only officially supported this software until April 8, 2014. After that date, they will stop updating the software for any new viruses, malware or other items that […]
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Social Security Drops Efforts To Collect Old Debts From Children of Debtors. Maybe.
As a follow up to a recent post, the Social Security Administration recently announced its suspending its efforts to collect old debts that stretch beyond 10 years. Acting commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin had this to say in an official statement: “I have directed an immediate halt to further referrals under the Treasury Offset Program to […]
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Another Tax Season Bites the Dust
I am waiting for my oldest son’s age to finally surpass the number of tax seasons I have completed. He is 27 (and working at a CPA firm in Costa Mesa, CA) and his little brother, age 25 works at Price Waterhouse Coopers in downtown LA (there is a chance he gets to spend 3 […]
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Social Security, Treasury Targets Taxpayers for Their Parent’s Decades-Old Debts
According to a recent Washington Post article, the Treasury Department has been seizing tax refunds or demanding payment from hundreds of thousands of Americans on some very old debts due to a single sentence in the 2008 farm bill that removed the 10-year statute of limitations on debt owed to the government. Since 2011, the […]