The comment period for the implementing rule on one of the biggest, most controversial and complex ag provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) closed today. That is the new Section 199A, which impacts cooperatives and their patrons. This provision allows for a 20 percent deduction from income earned by pass-through businesses. These are defined as small and medium-sized businesses organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations that pass their business income through the firm’s activities to the entrepreneur who owns the entity. That income is then subject to the personal tax rate. Approximately 93 percent of all U.S. farms are pass-through business tax filers. This new provision also includes a 20 perc...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.