Farm Industry Trends
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Involve Your Kids With Year-End Tax Planning
Many multi-generation farms have the parents totally immersed in the finances of the operation while the children may be more focused on the actual farm production activities. Since this is a time of year (right after harvest) to do your year-end tax planning, try to get the kids more involved this year in the actual […]
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When a Penny Matters?
I was reading an article in Accounting Today (yes, there are magazines about the accounting profession) about how publicly traded companies are rounding up their earnings more than normally expected. For example, the authors reviewed the earnings announcements for over 330,000 positive earnings announcements from 1995-2009. With that big of a sample size, you would […]
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Mistakes to Avoid in Lifetime Giving – Final
This post has our final mistakes to avoid in doing lifetime giving: If you are doing Medicaid planned gifts, remember that all transfers for less than FMV are subject to a lookback period of 60 months. Avoid gifts of installment contracts to anyone other than a spouse. A disposition, which a gift is, will result […]
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Mistakes to Avoid in Lifetime Giving – Part 2
We continue our series on mistakes to avoid in lifetime giving: Be aware of the Generation-skipping Transfer tax on any gifts that may involve your grandchildren. These gifts can subject you to additional gift taxes that you may not realize apply when you make the gift. Any gifts in excess of $13,000 to these beneficiaries […]
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Mistakes to Avoid In Lifetime Giving – Part 1
Lifetime giving of appreciating assets is one great tool to use to prevent unnecessary estate taxes. However, if done incorrectly, these gifts can prove costly. I will do a multi-series post on some of the mistakes to watch out for in the next few days: If you will pay for someone’s education or medical costs, […]
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Express Saver Costs a Taxpayer Thousands
A recent US Tax Court case summarizes how a taxpayer who tried to save a few dollars on Federal Express shipping services most likely cost them thousand of dollars. In the court case, the taxpayer had received a deficiency notice from the IRS on April 8, 2011. The taxpayer had until July 7, 2011 to […]
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A Lot of Fighting Words Over “Sugar”
We ran across this article on the continued fight between the makers of “natural” sugar (i.e. from cane and beets) and “corn sugar”. The corn processing industry has tried to change the official name of their product from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to “corn sugar”. The perception is that the word sugar has a better […]
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Section 179 for 2013
We have gotten a few emails in the last few weeks asking what the Section 179 deduction will be in 2013. The current law is a limit of $25,000 for 2013. However, both the President and Congress have discussed increasing the deduction up to $500,000 with a phase-out starting at $2 million. It appears at […]
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What About Hay?
We seem to write mostly about the main three grain crops in the US (corn, beans and wheat) since they comprise a large portion of US Ag revenues. However, there are several other very important crops that are harvested every year. One of those crops is hay. I have reviewed the data from the USDA […]
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A Decelerating Trend in Farmland Prices
The Chicago Federal Reserve Bank issued their 2012 Second Quarter AgLetter last week and it indicated that the rapid acceleration in farmland prices over the last two years has moderated substantially. For the district, year-over-year prices had risen by 12% in Indiana to a high of 24% for Iowa. However, the increase in prices for the […]