Agri-Invest Kickstart Funds

[Ooofty]

What is everyone doing,taking the cheque or depositing it into their agri-invest accounts? Will it count against your maximum allowable limit?

[caseman]

deposit it

[Ooofty]

how come? why not take the cash?

[Hopperbin]

Depositting it. To be used some day when more needed. Not sure yet what the interest will be on it but like the old nisa the interest was good. If you think your income is low then take the money, if your income is high then save it and pay the tax in a low income year and also earn interest on the tax saving in the meantime. They are not sure if they will even make a trigger for this program so money will be very easy to access in the future when needed. A trigger may be used in the future or more likely may not.

[Hopperbin]

Yes it will count to your max. allowable limit that you can have in Agri-invest. In the case you get to the max. then you can just withdraw moneys so you don't lose out on any matching government moneys. I wish they would give a tax deduction for the farmer's money put into the account. To be paid in the year of a withdrawal. Would give more insentive to build the account.

[TOM4CWB]

Hopperbin,

Take the amount you deposit, and claim that amount back/reduce your income through your optional inventory allowance. It ends up to be very close to end. The optional inventory allowance can smooth income just like a block average... if used with intelligence.

[Yusishen]

Obviously, if I take the Kickstart cheque, it's taxable income. No problem understanding that part.

However, if I tell them to deposit it, does it go into fund 2 (and therefore not be taxable until withdrawn) or is it like me putting money into fund 1 (and therefore, I'll pay tax on it anyway). I can't find the answer to that on the Ag Canada website.

The part that concerns me is the "we haven't decided on the trigger yet" and "we haven't decided on how to pay interest yet". Anybody else want to line up to put money into an investment where you don't know the return or how you can withdraw the funds? Too little details at this point for my liking.

Yes, NISA paid decent interest but there's no gaurantee this will be the same. Also, there might not be a trigger but there might and who knows what it will be. Being able to bank on the government's contribution is only good if you can actually get at the money.

As for take it if you think it's a poor year, who can tell in January if 2008 is going to be a poor year? Even if you wait until the deadline in June, you are still guessing (unless you are stuck with unseeded acres, of course).

[parsley]

As I have been led to understand, Strahl wanted to pay farmers the money that CAIS took away by using the same Fair Market Value start of year and year-end.

It did not take into account the drop in prices during the year.


Then, Strahl decided that’s not fair and have to fix that, but they only paid out:

50% of 2003

40% of 2004

That was it.

Parsley

[Hopperbin]

A trigger does not make sense, this program is meant to safeguard against the top 15 percent of income drop. The Agristability program covers larger income drops. So as long as one has agistability with the trigger and the inability to get money soon enough sometimes, that is what agri invest is meant to cover. So a trigger would make the program ineffective. But also by not having a trigger then the program could just develope into yearly payment program. I will choose to use it as a safety net. A safety net is no good if you have no money in it.