Today’s Harvest Blog

It’s that time of the year when state governments across the Northeast are crafting up budgets for their respective states. As always, we keep an eye out for important items that may positively impact farmers. Two recent highlights are from New York and Massachusetts.

Emergency Relief Program (ERP) phase one closed on December 16, 2022. Phase two opened on January 23rd and runs through June 2, 2023. The funds appropriated by Congress will be distributed through the Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) and the ERP. Regarding ELRP, the Farm Service Agency will release more information once they have finished its analysis on the 2021 drought and wildfire impacts on livestock producers.

As for tax updates, year-end 2022 is as good as any of the last few years. Some years we’re left dealing with changes that occur in January that are retroactive. This year, there are some last-minute things that are mostly good news. Here are the highlights.

The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) is a refundable tax credit that taxpayers could obtain by meeting a quantitative test for either a decline in revenues, or because their business was shut down wholly or partially due to a governmental order. This shutdown test includes “supply chain disruptions.” Today’s Tax Talk considers how the IRS views a supply chain disruption.