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Washington State Fruit Grower Hit With $2.25 Million Immigration Fine
Broetje Orchards in Washington State has agreed to pay a $2.25 million fine for employing illegal immigrants, which is one of the largest fines ever levied an agricultural entity. The case has spanned over four years and the penalty levied was for employing almost 950 people who weren’t authorized to work in the U.S. according […]
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Where Are Land Rents Headed?
I am at the University of Missouri Emerging Issues in Agricultural Lending today. I have two speaking sessions, but at the second session this morning, Jim Farrell, President and CEO of Farmers National Company gave a presentation on the trends in land and cash rents. The bull market in farm land started in the fall […]
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EPA and Corps Final Clean Water Rule’s Potential Impacts on Farming
The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers recently published a final rule to clarity the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Why is this important for farming? There are rules within this act that require an EPA permit for all discharges of pollutants to “waters of the United […]
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FSA Has Updated Listing of Irrigated/Non-Irrigated Counties
ARC-CO payments are made based upon the Olympic Average yield for each county on a covered crop-by-crop basis. Normally, all of the production is totaled for the county and then divided by planted acres to arrive at the actual yield for that county. However, if enough of the production in that county for that covered […]
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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 […]
