NCBA CLUSA, in collaboration with its team of legal, accounting and cooperative experts, have put together a comprehensive, in-depth and ambitious agenda for the 2016 Cooperative Professionals Conference, scheduled for September 19 – 21 in Miami, Florida.
Attendees will help elevate the standard of the cooperative movement’s only network of legal and accounting experts and will be eligible to earn Continuing Legal Education (CLE) and Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits during conference workshops. Register now to be part of this emerging platform for professional development!
The conference will kick off with a Co-op Primer designed for legal and accounting professionals new to the cooperative space or wishing to expand their existing co-op client base. This workshop offers a refresher on the basic structure of co-op businesses and the unique issues facing co-ops.
Conference workshops begin Monday, September 19, and cover a wide variety of topics in-depth. In Choice of Entity, learn about multi-stakeholder co-ops, LLC co-ops, corporate co-ops, work-around and public benefit corporations, as well as how a co-op is organized based on varying state statues. Monday’s workshops also address founder, labor and owner compensation and how to use co-ops for land ownership, real estate and housing.
Conference attendees will begin Tuesday, September 20, by studying cooperative taxation, Subchapter T and the IRS. You’ll learn how Subchapter T affects accounting systems, determine how the IRS defines patronage in different types of co-ops and explore best practices for systems that track patronage vs. non-patronage business and capital accounts. In Advanced Taxation and Co-op Finance, explore strategies for creating an indivisible reserve account, IRS tax treatment of patronage dividends for worker-owners and proactive engagement with the IRS.
Over lunch on Tuesday, attendees will enjoy a panel discussion exploring ways co-op development organizations, attorneys and accountants can support each other. Afternoon workshops will focus on co-op startup and growth financing. Attendees will consider the question, What is the potential for traditional and new venture capital and unconventional debt finance structures to help create and grow the cooperative movement? Concluding the day is an advanced workshop on conversions, including trends and tax issues for business entities converting to cooperatives.
To wind down the conference on Wednesday, the popular Ethics Panel is back again this year, during which a panel of legal and accounting professionals familiar with cooperatives discuss and offer resolutions to ethical issues previously submitted by conference attendees.
Click here to view full workshop descriptions.