By Erin Herbold-Swalwell

Last month we focused on several areas the Iowa Legislature is looking to address with respect to agriculture, including water quality, proposed livestock regulations and tax reform.

To keep on pace to finish the session in 100 days, the Legislature sets two self-imposed “funnel” deadlines. The first “funnel” was Feb. 16, (when Senate bills had to be reported out of Senate committees and House bills reported out of House committees). So, those bills that were introduced that did not pass in their committee-of-origin prior to the first funnel are now deemed “dead” and do not progress.

It’s important to note that appropriations, ways and means, and oversight bills are not subject to the funnel deadlines, so keep watching those bills.

Here is a summary of some bills that have been introduced since our last column and are still “alive” after the first funnel deadline:

• SF 2181, animal abuse. Amends Chapter 717B, which prohibits animal abuse or mistreatment, and imposes penalties by creating two new criminal offenses, including animal abandonment and endangerment. The Code of Iowa currently excludes livestock (i.e., bovine, caprine, equine, ovine or porcine species, ostriches, rheas, emus, farm deer or poultry), and this bill would make no changes that would bring livestock back into the enforcement.

• HF 495, beginning farmer tax credit. Extends the Iowa beginning farmer tax credit to January 2023.

• SF 2101, purple trespass markers. Establishes a new notification system for private landowners to use purple marks on trees or poles to indicate that going onto land is criminal trespass. Includes size and spacing requirements for the markers and makes exceptions.

• SF 2242, egg sales. Requires a grocery store or retailer participating in a federal food program that is offering specialty eggs to also maintain a regular inventory of conventional eggs (i.e., cage free, range free, etc.).

• HF 2111, fence viewing. Proposes to amend Iowa’s partition fence statute by requiring that a fence viewer who has a possible conflict of interest disclose it to the parties and other fence viewers. If there is an actual conflict, then the bill requires the fence viewer to resign, be disqualified involuntarily by a vote of the other trustees and replaced.

• State tax reform. Will the state Legislature “couple” with federal changes, including Section 179? On Feb. 13, Gov. Kim Reynolds unveiled plans for state tax reform that proposes to cut income taxes by a total of $1.7 billion between 2019 and 2023 state fiscal years.

One issue of critical importance to farmers this session is the Section 179 expensing limit. Reynolds proposed to increase the state limit from $25,000 to $100,000.
Remember, the new limit for Section 179 at the federal level is $1 million and 100% bonus depreciation. So, the governor’s proposal does not fully couple with the federal Section 179 amount.

Bills that didn’t survive ‘funnel’
At the beginning of the 2018 session, several bills relating to livestock regulation were introduced by Sen. David Johnson, including SF 2006-2009, and 2011, 2018, 2019 and 2036, relating to an array of issues involving confinement animal feeding operations, including siting and proposing moratoriums for certain proposed sites and Master Matrix issues.

Companion bills were also introduced in the House. These bills did not survive the funnel deadline.

This column is current as of Feb. 22. We will continue to watch these issues and provide updates in coming months. For updates and information on the bills mentioned above, search the bills online at www.legis.iowa.gov.

On a related note, Kristine Tidgren of the ISU Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation highlighted on the CALT website an issue regarding equipment trades that many farmers will want to pay attention to during this tax season.

The new federal tax law preserved like-kind exchange treatment for real property, but eliminated it for personal property.

Accordingly, equipment and livestock trades will be treated as taxable events under the new law. If this is an issue on your farm, read the full article.

Herbold-Swalwell is an attorney with Brick-Gentry PC in Des Moines.