Agriculture Tax Services

Farm tax is very complicated and in some cases you will have many options for reporting your income and expenses We can start by walking you through the different farming treatments from hobby farmer to restricted farmer to proprietorship, partnership all the way up to complex corporate structured farming and help you to determine what structure is best suited for your operation.

Reporting your farming income on a cash basis for tax allows you the ability to optimize or “level” your income. You can make sure that you carry forward the lows in your growth years to be able to offset against the higher years when you get a chance to catch up. In high years you have the ability to defer income and prepay expenses to defer taxes. We can help with advanced strategies for everyone from start up hobby farmers all the way to making sure you don’t pay too much when you are ready to wind your farm down or hand it off to the next generation.

We will work with you to ensure your strategies meet your goals. We will follow through with Canada Revenue Agency to ensure fair assessments. We prepare a lot of farm tax returns and keep on top of all the most recent changes. We will be able to guide you on what expenses and strategies are currently working well with CRA and which ones are being challenged.

Personalized optimization of taxes suitable for your farming operations. Assistance on what expenses are appropriate to claim, and be provided with strategies on how to bring the most benefits to you and your farm.

While farm taxes are reported on a cash basis your farm’s financial health is best determined by looking at accrual based financial statements. Making management decisions is best done with accurate information. Further to that, reporting to your bank with adjustments that include inventory growth, deferred income, current market prices, or equipment depreciation can help to give a more appropriate view of your farm’s financial health.

All businesses face business risk. Farmers face business risk in the form of weather on a nearly daily basis. Most farmers deal with crop insurance and farm insurance to cover the weather but what other forms of business risk do farms face?

Here are a few risk areas for you to consider:

• Operational risks
  • Employee errors
  • Equipment damage or replacement
  • Dealing with toxic or dangerous chemicals
  • External fraud
  • Utilities such as water, power, and gas depletion or interruption
• Human and health risks
  • Physical health
  • Mental health
• Security risks
  • Data
  • Banking
  • Computer records
• Financial risks
  • Currency
  • Interest rate risks
  • Liquidity risks
• Legal risk
• Compliance risk
• Strategic risk
  • Business strategies such as crop rotation or herd management
  • Right sizing to ensure you have the capacity to manage
• Reputational risk
• Location risk
• Technology risk

Looking at your farm operations to determine your ability or resiliency to manage crisis. There are several methods of risk management and we can provide advice and business coaching in many of these areas.

Develop future plans for your business and future ownership including gradual transitions or immediate transition plans for unexpected events. Personalized retirement planning. Developing plans on what is needed to be able to step away from business when you are ready to do so.

The problem with some succession plans is that they set the next generation up for failure. We like to take an extra step and look at succession from the next generation’s point of view. Planning for transition of ownership needs to be a well thought out process and its important for the next generation to understand what to expect financially. We can help with development of management reporting systems including financial analysis, current and projected cashflows and budgeting. We can help take some of the “scary unknowns” of taking over the farm and turn them into informed decisions. At the very least the next generation will understand what can be expected for various scenarios and have some guidance along the way if needed.

Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) is an often over-looked government tax incentive program to help encourage research and development. Depending on the size of business and industry, you can use these deductible expenses to help reduce your taxes.

Receive assistance on preparation, claims, and ensuring tax claims are received.

We can help with strategies on where, when and how to purchase or lease land, quota, breeding herds and equipment based on your current financial standing. Guidance on which option is the most beneficial to your operations to ensure strength in your long-term liquidity and financial health.

Agri-Stability is a program that was built to help assist producers with large declines in farming income for various reasons. During difficult years, Agri-Stability can help boost your income.

We can assist with your application into the program, alongside supplemental information that may be required to gain access to benefits following losses.

Agri-Invest is a program that will allow you to invest and have your investments matched by the government, alongside normal interest rates.

Be assisted with strategies on how and when to invest in these self-managed accounts and timing on when to withdraw your investments based on your current operations.

‘Right-sizing’ your farm would include an analysis of land, equipment, inventory including livestock and crops and helping to scale your business to the appropriate size of operations. Learn how to optimize your farm and reach you personalized maximum productivity.

Estimations on how many customers can be served, inventory maximization for land size and equipment on hand, optimizations of current operations.