Farm Leadership
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APH Yield Exclusion to be Available on Certain 2015 Spring Crops
The RMA announced today that the APH yield exclusion will be available for most 2015 spring crops. The APH yield exclusion allows farmers to exclude their own yields anytime the county or contiguous counties have a current yield that is less than 50% of the 10 year county yield. For example, assume a Texas wheat farmer farms […]
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Will ACA Require You To Include Health Insurance as Wages
Updated information on 11/9: http://www.farmcpatoday.com/2014/11/09/dol-plays-hardball Many farmers provide health insurance for their employees. In years past; whether the employer offered a qualified group plan or simply paid for the employee’s health insurance, the payment of the premium was deductible by the farmer and non-taxable to the employee. However, beginning January 1, 2014, an employee is only […]
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Base Reallocation Q & A
We have gotten numerous questions regarding the base reallocation election available to owners and we are summarizing these in a Q & A format: Q. Can I increase my base acres? A. No. You cannot increase or decrease your base acres. Those total acres are set; however, you are allowed to reallocate those acres from […]
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Join Andy Biebl, Lance Woodbury and Myself
DTN/Progressive Farmer puts on an Ag Summit in Chicago every year in December. This year on Sunday December 7 from 1 pm to 5 pm, Andy Biebl, Lance Woodbury and myself will be doing a joint presentation on Farm Retirement and Transition Planning. Some of the key topics that Andy and I will be presenting […]
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Complacency about Fraud Exacts a Heavy Cost
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) has produced a new infographic, “The Cost of Complacency”, warning about the costs to organizations of being overly complacent about financial fraud. The data was compiled by the ACFE for its 2014 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. Here are a few highlights from the […]
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Time Running Out on Late Portability Elections
We now have a new provision (although it has been around for a few years) that allows the unused portion of the first spouse’s estate to be “ported” over to the surviving spouse. We call this portability. There was a lot of confusion surrounding how to report this when the first spouse did not have […]
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Estimated Acre Payments for 2013 Crop Year
The old farm bill provided an option for producers called ACRE (Average Crop Revenue Election). The option, at that time, was a little bit complicated and required a reduction in other payments to participate. However, the payment amounts per acre were very substantial in certain years for various crops. FarmDOC Daily just issued a report […]
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Key Dates for Farm Programs
The FSA has posted on their website the updated key dates for ARC and PLC sign up as follows: The reallocation of base acres and updating of payment yields (for PLC) started yesterday (September 29, 2014) and will extend until February 27, 2015. Although the option to update payment yields is strictly for PLC election, […]
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Another Strike Against PLC
One of the arguments for using PLC instead of ARC is that PLC has unlimited payments (until you hit the overall payment limit of $125,000 per individual). However, one of the drawbacks to using PLC is your payment yield will not likely reflect your actual yields for 2014-2018. The payment yield for PLC purposes is […]
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Clarification on September 26 Date
In my post yesterday, I indicated that you need to update your farm structure by next Friday September 26, 2014 to ensure that your ARC or PLC decision for this year would be the one you wanted, not necessarily the one you got stuck with. We have gotten a few questions on this and after […]