The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 was signed into law on January 2, 2013. This new law modifies or extends many business tax breaks, and also contains many changes to individual income tax. There are substantial additional changes in this act, but the following are most likely to impact you and/or your business.

A multiemployer pension plan is used by an employer to provide a benefit to their employees in a plan that is shared with multiple employers, usually in similar industries. Under previous accounting principles, employers were only required to disclose their contributions to the plan without disclosing the funded status of the plan.

What We Have Seen in Cooperatives in 2012

As a cooperative, you are allowed to allocate various taxable items to your members.  Common items include qualified patronage and the section 199 deduction.  This benefit comes with some specific rules regarding reporting to your members and reporting to the Internal Revenue Service. When cooperatives make allocations to their members, they generally  have up to 81/2...

Organizations with fewer than 100 employees significantly trail their counterparts in the implementation of formal antifraud controls, according to a worldwide survey by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).  Antifraud experts say formal controls can help small businesses prevent and detect instances of fraud that, left undiscovered, could lead to costly losses and possibly...

The USDA released its listing of the top 100 agricultural cooperatives much sooner for the 2011 year.  Agricultural cooperatives had record sales and income in 2011, surpassing the previous record set in 2008.  These 100 coops reported record sales of $148 billion in 2011, an increase of almost 30% over 2010.  Net income for the...