Security Incentives

I love the internet and Google; otherwise I never would have run across this interesting article at JournalOfAccountancy.com: “Growing Opportunities: The Agricultural Chemical Security Credit”. Actually I wrote about this tax credit when it was included in the 2008 Farm Bill, but it is interesting to see it rise to the surface now. This tax credit effectively refunds 30% of covered measure security implementation costs up to a maximum of $2 million per year. That is a lot of security measures. Now, of course, this is limited to chemical security measures for agricultural products and has a number of limiting factors. But, it does go to show how strong the Farm Lobby is in Washington. This credit was added to the Farm Bill when it became obvious that DHS intended to include a number of agricultural chemicals in their list of chemicals of concern (COI). This would lead to many distributors and users of these chemicals falling under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS). This was after they lost the fight for these to facilities to be excluded. While a number of people have complained about the power of the chemical industry lobbyists to prevent costly legislation from passing, this once again demonstrates that the chemical industry is made up of rank amateurs when it comes to the business of lobbying. Maybe it is time for the K Street Chemists to start thinking about giving up the fight against some of the proposed chemical security rules and start fighting for tax breaks instead.