On Saturday, 16 January, 2010, forestry tax specialist Geary Searfoss will return to share his knowledge in a workshop sponsored by the Kickapoo Woods Cooperative at the La Farge Community building beginning at 10:00 am.

Searfoss will discuss tax planning for woodland owners, tax implications of various forestry activities, and what it means to treat it as a hobby, an investment or a business.  He will also discuss what forestry expenses are deductible,  capital gains provisions on timber sales, reforestation tax incentives, computation and allocation of timber basis, and the Wisconsin sales tax exemption for silviculture and how to qualify.

Advance reservations will help us to provide enough chairs and handouts, contact Lila Marmel at 608-624-5269 or sunmoon@mwt.net.

In addition, those who reserve ahead will have an opportunity to respond to a brief questionnaire that will help Geary fine-tune his presentation to answer the questions of those who plan to be there.

This seminar promises to bring the complexities of forestry tax law to landowners and tax preparers in layman's language.  An extensive handout will provide an outline of the talk in slide format.  Admission for the class is $5 for Kickapoo Woods Cooperative members, $10 for nonmembers.

The La Farge Community building is the former Masonic temple at 202 N. State Street, one block north of Main Street where State Highway 131 turns south.

Gary Searfoss began his professional life as a forester, having completed his Bachelor's degree in forestry at UW-Stevens Point in 1978.  On his first job working for a lumber mill, he received many questions from landowners about how to account for their timber harvest in their income tax forms, but he had no answers for them.  He later found a publication on forestry tax law by a forestry professor at Purdue University that piqued his interest, and he began working on the side doing tax accounting when things were slow on his job as a consulting forester.  He later became an Enrolled Agent doing tax accounting and went back to college at University of Minnesota-Duluth for a Bachelor's degree in accounting, then worked with a public accounting firm for a few years and became a certified public accountant.  He worked at the Wisconsin Forest Productivity Council, an educational outreach organization for landowners, from January, 1999 until the organization closed its doors at the end of 2004.  He and his wife then moved to his tree farm near Winter, Wisconsin, where he restarted his forestry tax practice.

Light refreshments and coffee will be provided by the Woods Cooperative.  The Kickapoo Woods Cooperative's mission is to provide forestry education, management and marketing services to residents of the Kickapoo valley and neighboring watersheds that will improve the forestry resource.