#farming
Agricultural tax rules for farmers and ranchers, including Schedule F income reporting, crop insurance deferrals, livestock sales, conservation deductions, and farm-specific income averaging
How small growers keep books that answer "which crop made money?" — Schedule F expense categories, why cash accounting fits a market garden, the March 1 / January 15 farmer estimated-tax rule, the farm optional method for Social Security credits, and per-enterprise cost allocation by bed-feet and labor hours.
Agrivoltaics can pay a farmer $900–$1,500 per acre in solar lease rent on top of crop and grazing income, each taxed differently. Here is how to book all three streams as separate ledger lines to protect your Schedule F, agricultural assessment, and self-employment-tax boundaries.
Cash rent lands on Schedule E with no self-employment tax, but a crop-share landlord who pays half the inputs and advises the tenant can trip the material-participation test and owe 15.3 percent on Schedule F. How each lease splits yield, price, and input-cost risk, with a worked 160-acre example and the settlement records both landlord and tenant need.
Natural wild rice has a fixed August 15–September 30 season and a 9 a.m.–3 p.m. daily harvest window, so its bookkeeping must separate harvest, processing, inventory, and deferred customer deposits. This guide shows how to build a crop-based chart of accounts, treat preorders as a liability until earned, reconcile buyer settlements, and run a weekly cash check.
Farm payroll doesn't use Form 941. Learn how Form 943's annual filing, the $150 per-worker and $2,500 aggregate cash-wage tests for FICA and withholding, and the separate $20,000 FUTA threshold work in 2026, plus the bookkeeping split that keeps farm and nonfarm liabilities off the wrong return.
A practical guide to truffle orchard accounting — why a 5- to 10-year preproductive period triggers Section 263A capitalization, when the small-farmer election lets you expense instead, how to track costs by block, and when a block becomes productive and starts 10-year depreciation.
USDA's latest survey put average ginning cost at $49.31 per bale in 2022, up 106% in three years. This guide shows how a cotton gin should structure its books — unbundling the per-bale ginning fee into receiving, drying, pressing, and bagging cost centers, booking cottonseed (15–20% of per-bale gross revenue) as a separate product line, and breaking module truck hauling out as its own transportation charge.
Craft maltsters lose 10–20% of raw barley weight during steeping, germination, and kilning, pay farmers 3–4× feed-grain prices under multi-season contracts, and can wait over a year between buying grain and selling malt. Here's how to handle yield-ratio costing, contract-growing arrangements, and working-capital planning for a malthouse.
The FDA moved the FSMA 204 Food Traceability Rule compliance date 30 months, from January 20, 2026 to July 20, 2028, and Congress barred earlier enforcement. The rule itself is unchanged — FTL foods, seven Critical Tracking Events, Key Data Elements, and 24-hour sortable records — so here's who's exempt and how small food businesses can build a compliant traceability plan without enterprise software.
Minnesota AG Keith Ellison and four other states settled with John Deere on July 8, 2026, forcing 10 years of dealer-equivalent repair access for farmers and independent shops. Here's what dealer-locked equipment costs small businesses beyond agriculture, and how to budget preventive maintenance instead of absorbing emergency repair markups.
Livestock auction markets are federal fiduciaries under the Packers and Stockyards Act — custodial accounts must be funded by the next business day, reimbursed in full within seven days, and reconciled monthly. This guide covers the chart of accounts a sale barn needs, how the required surety bond is calculated from sale volume, and why Beef Checkoff and brand-inspection fees must stay out of revenue.
How ag equipment dealerships should track floor-plan interest per unit, re-mark trade-in inventory as used tractor prices fall, and measure parts-department absorption rate — where the national average sits in the mid-60s percent and under 50% signals trouble.
