Little Known Fact About Farming and Taxes

Trying to track down a cryptic bit on payment limitation and ACRE, I ran across this from a footnote in the Congressional Research Service report on the 2008 farm bill:

Farms overwhelmingly report losses for tax purposes (because of cash accounting, depreciation, and other practices), even though USDA farm income numbers are positive. For example, in 2004, two-thirds of all Schedule F tax returns showed a loss, resulting in a sector-wide net farm loss of $13 billion for all Schedule F returns. By comparison, USDA farm income data showed an $80 billion profit. Even for “large” farms with sales over $250,000, about one-third report a loss for tax
purposes.