At KEB, we’ve been practicing as long as you’ve been growing.
Our connection to agribusiness dates back to our firm’s beginnings in the Midwest and many of our partners work in central Illinois at the center of the corn belt.
We have several CPAs around the group of offices at KEB with experience in Agribusiness. We can help you with the unique needs for tax planning and return preparation, accounting and financial statement preparation and guidance you need on the unique financing and tax issues encountered in agribusiness entities.
At KEB, we approach each of our client’s operations with firsthand agriculture experience while offering a valuable outside perspective. We present unbiased, honest assessments to ensure that the decisions you make are well-informed. Our team approach allows us to review multiple outcomes and deliver the most sensible solutions to meet our clients’ unique needs and vision for the future.
The AgGroup at KEB
For our clients who want a broader spectrum of guidance in their Ag issues from KEB, we have a team of CPAs and consultants in our Litchfield Illinois office who spend their days specializing in serving the needs of medium to large farms. Known as KEB’s AgGroup, this team of professionals serves a multitude of family farms, farm operators, ranchers, and ag producers from Minnesota to Texas and Kansas to Indiana. They have decades of experience in the production agricultural, not only as CPA’s but also with personal experience on their own family farms as well as serving as Farm CFO’s.
In addition to a predictive assessment of tax outcomes and tax planning, financial reporting and advise on the traditional financing needs of producers, the AgGroup team handles the complex issues of “multi-entity” family farms which have evolved in response to the Farm Service Agency program constraints in recent years.
We help guide our producer clients at accomplishing:
Organizational tax planning. We work with you throughout changes in entity structure for your agribusiness, from helping you save tax money to transitioning your children as new managers and owners. We also assist with finance/debt reorganization and structuring organizational entities to accommodate federal program guidelines as outlined by the Farm Service Agency.
Succession planning. We can assist you in the transferring of certain assets or entity ownership from the current generation or team to the next. Succession planning can be easily put off and often be uncomfortable but is one of the most important tasks to accomplish before retirement. Each of our farm succession plans is tailored to your family’s specific situation and long-term goals. We help to advise you on potential estate and gift tax exposure, planning for potential income tax ramifications, and preparing the legal agreements that will document and govern your succession plan. We can jump start those badly needed family conversations.
Mergers. We completed our first farm combination in 1985. We can look at your farm operations from a third-party perspective to explore the outcomes of combining or merging farms/operations. We also help with planning long-term farm business strategies or assisting with the process of an organizational change, such as a new management team.
Creation of family and advisory boards of directors. We are often working to help a generation of owners begin transitioning out of the business while their capital remains invested. Transitioning to a family board role is often a nice solution to staging withdrawal responsibilities while allowing new management to engage in the day-to-day operations. We guide families with creating and developing these family boards or business boards of directors, as well as the necessary rules for governance going forward.
The AgGroup serves producers with an array of skills and offerings that point at the issues being dealt with today on the farm. Please feel free to get to know our team of focused ag production specialists below in our AgGroup Professional Team Bios.