EAST LANSING, Mich. — A breakfast meeting for field crop producers and agribusiness professionals on April 17, 2018 in St. Joseph County will focus on various tax laws, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and how they will impact farmers in 2018. The meeting will also be available to the public online.
The MSU Extension Field Crops Team in Southwest Michigan is hosting a Breakfast Meeting Series developed to address common farm management issues as well as those that may be emerging or are longer term in nature. The series runs from March 27 through May 15 on Tuesdays from 7:00 to 8:30 AM at the Extension office in Centreville. Attendees to the breakfasts are asked to call the St. Joseph County Extension office (269-467-5511) or email Eric Anderson (eander32@msu.edu) so enough food can be prepared.
On April 17th, Kristiana Coutu of Varnum Attorneys at Law in Kalamazoo will discuss various tax laws that have direct impacts on farms. The meeting will be sponsored by Aaron Hollister with Schaefer & Hollister Wealth Management Group of Raymond James in Grand Rapids. Ms. Coutu will address specific issues including sales of livestock, issues related to crop insurance, income from cooperatives, payroll issues related to farm labor, and the tax issues related to farm losses. Changes stemming from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed in December, 2017, will first impact farmers and their families with their 2018 tax returns. Changes will occur with depreciation, the Section 179 deduction, treatment of net operating losses, and other issues. You can read about the TCJA at the Congress.gov website in its entirety or just the highlights, Q&A, and its proposed impacts on Americans at the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee website.
For those who are not able to attend the meeting in person, a Zoom session (similar to Skype) will be open to the public and accessible from any computer, tablet or smartphone with a stable internet connection. Remote attendees can click on this link to join (or enter bit.ly/msue2018breakfast into a web browser)—video and microphones will be turned off for participants, but questions and comments can be sent in via a chat feature. Each session will also be recorded for viewing later by visiting the Agriculture page of the St. Joseph County Extension website.
Future breakfast meetings will follow the same format, and the public is welcome to participate in person or online for each. [Any last-minute schedule changes that may be necessary will be communicated when attendees call to sign up.]
Date | Topic | Speakers |
March 27 | How to Keep Your Crop Field From Becoming a Wildlife Food Plot | Tim Wilson, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Ken Kesson, MI Department of Natural Resources, and James DeDecker, MSU Extension educator |
April 10 | Early Season Crop Pests | Bruce MacKellar, MSU Extension educator |
April 17 | Tax Laws and Their Impacts on Farms | Kristiana Coutu, Attorney, Varnum Attorneys at Law |
April 24 | Managing White Mold in Soybeans | Dr. Martin Chilvers, Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology, MSU |
May 1 | Spring Irrigation and Drainage Issues | Dr. Ehsan Ghane, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, MSU and Lyndon Kelley, Irrigation Educator for Purdue and MSU Extension |
May 8 | Doubling Up: Forages as Cover Crops | Dr. Kim Cassida, Forage & Cover Crop Specialist, MSU |
May 15 | Reintroduction of Industrial Hemp into U.S. Agriculture | Marguerite Bolt, Master’s student in the Department of Entomology, Purdue University |
— Eric Anderson, Michigan State University Extension
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