Category: News, etc.

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NC Department of Revenue law change

Looks like some more regulations have hit farmers and farmers markets. Thanks NC legislature for making it just a little bit harder to be a farmer.

Here are the details as I received them in an email.

From: Jake Parker
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 12:04 PM
To: Debbie Hamrick
Subject: RE: Question about Farmers Markets and Recent Tax Law Change

After reviewing the specialty market statutes and talking with a couple of individuals who helped draft the recent revisions to the law, it is my opinion that: (1) farmers market operators are now required to maintain a daily registration list of vendors regardless of whether they rent or merely provide space to vendors; and (2) farmers market vendors are required to obtain a certificate of registration from the NC Department of Revenue (NCDOR) even though all of the items they sell are exempt from sales tax (e.g., agricultural products grown on their farms).

Here’s my more detailed analysis of the issue:

N.C.G.S. § 66-255 requires specialty market operators or operators of events where space is provided to vendors to maintain a daily list of vendors that discloses, among other information, the vendors’ NCDOR registration numbers. Prior to last summer, the statute applied only to operators of specialty markets, which are defined as locations where space is rented to a vendor for the purpose of selling or offering goods for retail. See N.C.G.S. § 66-250(4) (emphasis added). Under this old language, it was arguable that farmers market operators may have been able to get around the daily registration list requirement if they did not lease market space to their vendors. However, during the 2013 long session, the legislature expanded the scope of the statute to include “operators of events where space is provided to vendors.” The purpose for this revision was to assist NCDOR in executing its sales tax compliance checks.

Based on the revised statutory language, farmers markets are certainly “events where space is provided to vendors.” As a result, farmers market operators are now required to maintain a daily registration list of vendors regardless of whether or not they rent space to vendors. The revised statute also requires farmers market operators to make their daily registration lists available upon request to law enforcement or NCDOR compliance officers.

In addition, the revised statute clarifies that farmer’s market vendors must obtain a certificate of registration from NCDOR even though they are planning to sell only tax exempt items, such as agricultural products grown on the vendors’ farm. The prior version of the statute suggested that farmers market vendors may be required to have a NCDOR registration number because it mandated that farmers market operators: (1) ask vendors to show their “valid certificate of registration . . . at the time of registration [at the market]”; and (2) ensure that vendors “keep the certificate . . . conspicuously and prominently displayed.” N.C.G.S. § 66-255. But another statute exempted certain vendors who sell “farm or nursery products” grown on their farms or who locate at farmers markets from the registration requirement. See generally N.C.G.S. § 66-256. However, in revising N.C.G.S. § 66-255, the General Assembly nullified these exemptions as they relate to the registration requirement. Consequently, farmers market vendors must now secure a certificate of registration from NCDOR if they wish to sell their products at farmers markets. According to the NCDOR website, vendors who exclusively sell tax exempt items “are required to file a return reflecting $0.00 in tax due for the filing period.” See http://www.dornc.com/taxes/sales/specialty.html#exemption (last visited Jan. 21, 2014). As a corollary, the vendor must report and remit the proper amount of sales tax to NCDOR to the extent they are selling non-exempt goods.

I hope this information is helpful. I have pasted the revised text of N.C.G.S. § 66-255 below for easy reference. As always, please let me know if you have questions.

Jake

§ 66-255. Specialty market or operator of an event registration list

A specialty market operator or operator of an event where space is provided to a vendor must maintain a daily registration list of all specialty market or other vendors selling or offering goods for sale at the specialty market or other event. The registration list must clearly and legibly show each vendor’s name, permanent address, and certificate of registration number. The specialty market operator or other event operator must require each vendor to exhibit a valid certificate of registration for visual inspection by the specialty market operator or other event operator at the time of registration, and must require each vendor to keep the certificate of registration conspicuously and prominently displayed, so as to be visible for inspection by patrons of the vendor at the places or locations at which the goods are offered for sale. Each daily registration list maintained pursuant to this section must be retained by the specialty market operator or other event operator for no less than two years and must at any time be made available upon request to any law enforcement officer or the Secretary of Revenue or the Secretary’s duly authorized agent. For purposes of the registration list, the exemptions in G.S. 66-256 do not apply.

N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 66-255 (2014 West).

Jake Parker
Legislative Counsel & State Legislative Director
North Carolina Farm Bureau
PO Box 27766
Raleigh, NC 27611
(919) 987-1244 (o)
(919) 605-5603 (c)
Twitter: @jakeparkerjr

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I’m back, again.

las-vegas-night

Once again I’ve snuck away from the farm. This time it wasn’t for work, or to pick up a cow. It was to go to Las Vegas with some of my good friends and vacate a bit. We rode in limos, drove fast cars, attended SHOT, and ate some pretty good food. The five part mini-series on grass fed beef I just posted was caused by two things.

1. While in Las Vegas for 3 days, I had the distinct pleasure of trying to be 20 again and stay up late, coupled with the fact that I’m nowhere close to 20 and am a farm boy and get up at 0’dark early. The end result is I slept about 9 hours in 3 days, leaving me lots of time to work on posts for you fine folks while everyone else snored.

2. Las Vegas is known for their restaurants and food. They aren’t the “foodie” culture of Charleston or New York, but they do try to one up each other out there and serve something better than the next guy. I made sure to sample lots of beef and pork and came across the $66 grass fed ribeye that was the basis for the previous five posts. So my field research resulted in a pretty good result at only $13.20 per post.

So now I’m back and it’s time to get more farm related stuff published here. I have lots of details from the class I took last week, plus a new stock trailer that needs some pictures and needs some animals to ride. We also have our hog killing class coming up in a month which will get lots of press. And before we know it, it’ll be spring and we’ll be back to pictures of grazing and trample (CB, I know you cannot wait).

And just in case you were wondering about the fast cars. Here is one of my friends, post drive, trying out the fit of something he now desperately wants. IMG-20140116-00136

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Venison

Yesterday, after breakfast and setting up paddocks for the cows, the inmates and I went to work on the two deer that Spork and I had put in the cooler. Brian had never butchered a deer, while John had some experience. Everyone was an expert by the end though. We put together an assembly line and knocked out both deer in about an hour and a half. John broke down the halves into major cuts, the Brian and I trimmed off all the meat and handed it to The Princess who was in charge of grinding the hamburger. The Spork stuffed the vacuum seal bags and sealed and labeled. It was a true group effort.

Except for the tenderloin, we ground everything into ground meat. The Mrs tells me that we are almost out of ground pork so the timing is right. Now she can mix venison in with the remaining pork and stretch it out.

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How to stop heartburn easily and without medicine

As many of you know, I’ve lost a bunch of weight. January 2013 my darling SWMBO decided that she (and therefor I) was going on a diet. Having been in a household where diets came and went continuously, I had no issue with a diet. What I did have an issue with was having to give up ice cream. Not because it was yummy (it is) but because I used ice cream to treat my heartburn. I probably ate ice cream 4-5 times per week, plus I took antacids another once or twice per week. For those of you doing math, yes, I had heartburn nearly every day. This didn’t really worry me as my father had suffered with heartburn all the years of my life. It came with the job. However with SWMBO saying we were giving up carbs, I was terribly worried that my heartburn would get out of control. So what was the result?

With trepidation I gave up carbs and on day one I had to take an antacid to get through the day. On day three it occurred to me I had somehow had a good day with no heartburn. By day 10 I’d forgotten what it was like to have heartburn. Folks, I gave up carbs and my chronic heartburn disappeared, period. I can recreate it whenever I want simply by dosing on carbs for a day. With all this in mind, I thought I’d share this blog post about heartburn. I never made it past step 2 so I cannot comment on the rest, but I can tell you step one worked like a champ and no doctor every mentioned anything about carbs, exactly as this guy describes.

Here is the link to the blog post.

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Back from school

I’ve just returned from 2 and 1/2 days in Jackson, MS at the Stockman Grass Farmers grazing and finishing school with Annabal Pordodomingo. I have a book full of facts and pages of notes. Most of what I learned will be used in my cattle management but some of it I’ll be sharing here with everyone. Look for details as time goes on of the things I’ve learned that I can share with you.

It’s good to be home. I do hope we don’t get another cold spell because we’ve had water problems galore while I’ve been gone. I had to lean heavily on Miguel while I was gone to get all the water issues (read: broken pipes) resolved. The bad part was I just learned today that he’s been sick the entire time I was gone, something he failed to mention. Thanks to Miguel for toughing it out and keeping things good for me on the farm.

Also thanks to the inmates John and Brian who kept the animals fed and in the correct corral. We’ll be dressing deer tomorrow in addition to catching up on all the work I missed this week. Hopefully it’ll stop raining long enough to get some work done.

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How the government is getting into your food (and a political rant)

So the following article popped up on Fox News last week about how the government is getting more involved in your food.

Article on Fox News

I thought I’d go through the ten items and give my two cents, for whatever that’s worth (probably not 2 cents)

#1. Meh, if they’d stayed out of the low fat BS in the first place, we wouldn’t be dealing with transfats now. More bans lead to more problems.

#2. Interesting comment on how raw milk is akin to ground beef. You’d think raw milk would kill you on sight based on how it’s treated. I don’t know how many gallons of it we’ve consumed and have yet to die. I don’t blink at eating a rare hamburger, the same goes for raw milk.

#3. Bloomburg is the worst of the nanny state ideologues, period.

#4. I just mentioned the farm bill. Enough said there.

#5. Menu labeling. They can’t say it’s GMO on the label, but they can require all the other things we don’t need to know to be on the menu. What’s this going to do? I guess we’ll get an End User License Agreement (EULA) before we dine like we do on every piece of software. Everyone reads those, right?

#6. Food trucks are awesome. I really like how some of them operate and really step out on their menu and their ingredients. I haven’t eaten menudo from the food truck yet, but I’m sure I will someday. I have eaten tacos in my bedroom slippers while driving a gator. That was a fine dinner.

#7. This is monumentally stupid. We tax working Americans. We then take that tax money, at the point of a gun, btw and give it to farmers to artificially lower the price of corn while simultaneously charging tarriffs on sugar to make sugar less competitive. Corporations then make a product that people want, using cheap corn syrup as a sweetener which makes a soda 99 cents while a bottle of water is 3 dollars. We then use taxing authority, which was never intended to be punitive, to tax the soda because soda is bad. Less laws make for better results, not more.

#8. Good, this is the free market working.

#9. This was a scary one. The new rules were onerous and left very little room for small producers, which is exactly the type of producer consumers want from farmers markets and farm to consumer setups. Knowing your farmer is the best safety system their is. Large corporations want complex regulations because it creates a huge barrier to entry for competition.

#10. I agree with the point here. If a kid nagging for McDonalds is why you stop, then you’re fooling yourself. You stop because it’s easier. Being a parent isn’t about easier. If you wanted easier you should have stayed in college and not scheduled any classes before 10am. Being a parent is about being unpopular with your kids and enforcing a code of conduct that includes what goes in their mouths. Do our kids get desert? Yep. Arsenic in low levels won’t kill you and neither will sugar. However there has to be proper balance to a diet. Even McDonalds won’t kill you although we never eat fast food as a choice. Has stopping beer ads changed the drunk driving results? Underage consumption? I honestly don’t know but I doubt it.