For employers, the time is now to comply with a little-known provision in the new stimulus law, signed by President Obama on February 17th. Part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is a revamping of COBRA law for certain employees.

The latest economic stimulus law, enacted on February 17, 2009, contains tax incentives designed to get the stagnant U.S. economy moving again. Here are 10 significant changes that might have an impact on your business.

By that we mean, continue to utilize at the Cooperative level, pass the benefit through to the patron or a combination of both. We envision recommending some alternatives that will utilize non-qualified patronage allocations also. Our goal is to help you further strengthen your balance sheets and manage your members’ equity to best fit your situation or long-term plans.

As most of you know, the pooling of interests method simply combined the accounts of each merging company at book value, with no adjustments to reflect market value differences. In addition, retained savings of both companies were also combined.

Congratulations are in order for Brian Bohling upon his induction into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame this past fall. The Nebraska Football Hall of Fame is sponsored by the Nebraska Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame.

While this year brought success for some, most of you missed an opportunity to utilize non-qualified patronage allocations. I use the term “missed” because making a non-qualified allocation with a cooperative that hasn’t utilized or discussed such allocation in advance, is difficult to do at the audit board meeting.