Title 26 › Subtitle Subtitle A— Income Taxes › Chapter 1— NORMAL TAXES AND SURTAXES › Subchapter T— Cooperatives and Their Patrons › Part I— TAX TREATMENT OF COOPERATIVES › § 1382
Cooperatives figure their taxable income under special rules. A co-op cannot shrink its gross income just because it allocates or distributes net earnings to its patrons. But when it pays out patronage dividends or per-unit retain allocations in money, qualified written notices, qualified certificates, or other property, those amounts are left out of its taxable income. The same goes for money paid to redeem nonqualified notices or certificates issued in an earlier year. To count, a payment must be made during the payment period, which runs from the first day of the tax year through the fifteenth day of the ninth month after the year ends. A qualified check counts as money if it is cashed within 90 days after that period closes. Farmer-type cooperatives get extra deductions for dividends paid on their capital stock and for patronage-based payouts of earnings from government business or other non-patronage sources. For co-ops that pool products for marketing, patronage is generally treated as happening in the year the pool closes, under IRS regulations. An older rule letting some co-ops use the completed crop pool accounting method applies only to pools opened before March 1, 1978, so it has little effect today.
Full Legal Text
Internal Revenue Code — Source: USLM XML via OLRC
Legislative History
Reference
Citation
26 U.S.C. § 1382
Title 26 — Internal Revenue Code
Last Updated
Apr 6, 2026
Release point: 119-73