The straight line

Over the past few years I have heard many different opinions in regard to patronage allocations, ranging the gamut from: "The members don't want to accept patronage allocations," to "Cooperatives must allocate patronage earnings." More specifically, I have hear that members want earnings reinvested for bigger and better facilities, more efficient equipment and the most recent technologies rather than receiving patronage earnings from their local cooperative. Before deciding to dole out patronage allocations or reinvest those earnings, cooperatives must consider the tangible and intangible values that each option holds.

We would like to take a moment to thank all of you who came out to see us in our hospitality room at last year’s CHS Meeting in Minneapolis. We had over 100 attendees, and gave away American Express® gift cards, golf balls and the grand prize: a Kindle Fire E-reader. We hope you will join us for 2012’s meeting in our hospitality room, and thank you again for helping us make this year’s meeting a great success!

Please welcome Cristina Bucksbaum to our Des Moines tax department staff. Cristina has 15 years of experience in the tax world, and joined Gardiner Thomsen on January 11th, 2012. Her experience covers a wide variety of tax issues and we are pleased that she joined our firm.

If you haven’t yet filed forms 1096 or W-3 with the IRS or SSA, it will be easier to fix a mistake on them without the need to file amended returns. However, if you have already filed forms 1096 or W-3 with the government, and there are errors on those forms, then you will also have to file amended reports which can be complicated and time consuming. So, file those 1096s and W-3s closer to their due date to avoid potential amended return filings.

We want to be certain that you are taking full advantage of the many tax credits available to cooperatives. We are also taking steps to improve our communication with you regarding these credits. Following are some of the credits that our clients may qualify for:

• Most clients were more profitable in 2011 compared to 2010, and many reported record earnings. Higher commodity prices along with increased or steady grain and agronomy volumes meant sales dollars were also considerably higher in 2011.