One Big Beautiful Bill: Key Takeaways for Farmers

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in early July, is a comprehensive piece of legislation with significant implications for various sectors, including agriculture.

Farm Credit East recently hosted a webinar on the agricultural provisions of the bill, highlighting the tax and crop insurance implications for Northeast agriculture. Following are the key takeaways from this webinar.

Tax Benefits

The bill introduces several tax benefits for farmers, including the ability to spread tax payments over four years for certain farmland sales, estate tax exemption is locked at $15 million per person and the 20% Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction is now permanent. These provisions will benefit farm profitability and long-term succession planning.

Depreciation Enhancements

Significant enhancements were made to depreciation limits and deductions. Bonus depreciation is back at 100% for various types of property and investments in qualified production properties, including orchards, vineyards and general-purpose barns.

Expanded Crop Insurance and Farm Programs

The bill includes major improvements to farm programs and crop insurance, such as increased payment limitations, enhanced premium support for crop insurance and extended benefits for beginning farmers up to 10 years. Additionally, supplemental and enhanced coverage options will become more accessible and affordable to producers.

Boost to Dairy Margin Coverage Program

The Dairy Margin Coverage program has been extended through 2031 and improved, with increased production coverage levels, discounts for multi-year enrollment and opportunities to update production history.

Individual Taxpayer Perks

Other notable provisions include enhancements to the child tax credit, mortgage interest deduction, social security tax deductions and new tax credits for clean energy and qualified opportunity zones.

Additional Resources

It’s important to work with tax advisors and leverage available resources to navigate the new provisions and optimize benefits for individual farm operations.

To review the webinar recording along with the presenter’s PowerPoint slides, click the link below.

Additionally, Farm Credit East’s tax team recently published a series of blog articles to dive deeper into these topics. Click a link below to learn more.

One Big Beautiful Bill’s Impact on Northeast Agriculture: Business Tax Changes

One Big Beautiful Bill’s Impact on Northeast Agriculture: Agricultural Changes

One Big Beautiful Bill’s Impact on Northeast Agriculture: Individual Tax Changes