Crop Insurance Payments

Just a reminder from Pub 225 from IRS:

Generally all crop insurance proceeds you receive as a result of physical damage or reduction of income must be reported in the year received.

You can elect to postpone reporting them as income until the following year of the physical damage occurred if you meet all the following conditions:

*You use cash basis method of accounting

*You receive the insurance proceeds in the same year the crops are damaged

*You can show that under normal business practices, you would include more than 50% of the income from the damaged crops in any tax year following the year the damaged occurred.

Proceeds received from revenue insurance policies may be the result of either yield loss due to physical damage or to decline in price from planting to harvest. For these policies, only the amount of the proceeds received as a result of yield loss can be deferred. Proceeds received from weather insurance policies cannot be deferred if the payment is based on rainfall amounts and is not a result of physical damage to a crop.

This is an article from 2018 from CALT but still pertinent.

Special Rule for Taxing Crop Insurance and Disaster Payments | Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation (iastate.edu)