Farm Leadership
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MidWest Crop Tour
Just letting everyone know that I am leaving bright and early tomorrow morning to fly to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Chris Barron is picking me up at the airport and we are then headed to Columbus, Ohio. We will spend the night in Bloomington, Illinois (most likely) and then meet up with about 100 scouts in […]
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New IRS Website for Healthcare Provisions
The IRS has just released a new website that recaps and provides information on most of the Health Care Provisions of ObamaCare. Although we sometimes have issues with the IRS as preparers and farmers, I must admit that their website is one of the better sites on the internet. There is a lot of information […]
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How to Blow a 1031 Exchange
Recently, I had a taxpayer call me about the sale of some farm land. The taxpayer had sold 80 acres for $960,000 that they had inherited from his mother about 20 years ago. The tax basis in the property was about $150,000 so they were facing an $800,000 long-term capital gain which would cost them […]
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The New Farm Bill
Mark Reisinger, the Global Grain Trade lead gave an update on the new farm bill this morning at the NextGen conference. With the House failing to pass a Farm Bill that included the nutrition program, we now have a Senate/House sub-committee working on a new Farm Bill. The Senate portion offers two programs based on […]
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Letting Go
Yesterday, I was in Des Moines, Iowa for a Pioneer Seed sponsored NextGen conference. This conference is for the younger generation of farmers who are presented ideas on how to grow their business. One of the sessions had three farmers from various parts of the country (Iowa, Texas and New Jersey) and one of the […]
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Don’t Forget Your Retirement (Plan)!
I get the following question at least three or four times a year from our clients: “I know my income is too high to contribute to an IRA, what other options are there?” When Congress put in the income limitations on IRA several years ago, there arose a misconception regarding the limit. Many people, including […]
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Is Peak Corn Over (For Now)?
A few years ago, the term Peak Oil was in the media. This term represented the notion that the production of oil worldwide had peaked and we would be showing lower and lower production levels each year. With the discovery of fracking of shale oil formations, this term is not used much lately. My question […]
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The Perils of Benchmarking
The next two sessions at FFSC dealt with the perils of benchmarking. As farmers try to benchmark themselves against other comparable farm operations, it becomes readily apparent that many perils or issues can arise. In many cases farmers (since they are human) really like using benchmarking when they are above average. In they are below […]
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Will Crop Insurance Proceeds Be Deferrable This Year?
We have had a couple of posts on prevent plant crop insurance proceeds being deferrable into 2014, however, what happens if there are crop insurance proceeds at harvest time. Most likely, all or almost all of these proceeds will be related to a drop in price. For example, the Corn Spring price was $5.65. If […]
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How Long is Your Pickup Bed
We had a reader ask the following questions about purchasing a new pick-up in 2013: “The new 2014 Silverado pickup has a model with a 5′ 8″ (inside dimension) box. Can you take section 179 on the full amount of this pickup for the 2013 tax year?” The Tax Code has a provision that does […]