Form IT-647-I: Instructions for the Farm Workforce Retention Credit (Tax Year 2025)

Form IT-647-I is the instruction booklet the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance publishes to accompany Form IT-647 and its attachment, Form IT-647-ATT. Together, these documents allow eligible farm employers to claim the Farm Workforce Retention Credit, a New York State tax credit designed to offset the cost of employing farm workers throughout the year. If you run an agricultural operation in New York and pay wages to eligible farm employees, this credit can meaningfully reduce your state tax liability for 2025.

The Farm Workforce Retention Credit isn’t a new incentive, but the rules around eligible employees, wage thresholds, and calculation methods get updated periodically, which is why the instructions are reissued each tax year. The IT-647-I booklet walks filers through exactly how to determine who counts as an eligible farm employee, how many hours they need to have worked, and how to calculate the credit amount per employee based on hours worked during the tax year.

Who Needs This Form

This credit applies specifically to taxpayers who operate a farming business in New York State and employ farm laborers. That includes sole proprietors, partnerships, and corporations engaged in agricultural production. If your operation employs seasonal or year-round farm workers and you pay New York State income tax (or corporate franchise tax, depending on your business structure), you likely need to review these instructions to see if you qualify.

The credit is calculated per eligible employee, based on hours actually worked during the tax year, so farms with a larger eligible workforce generally see a bigger credit. The instructions include worksheets to help you tally hours and wages correctly before transferring totals to the main form.

When You Use IT-647 and IT-647-ATT

Form IT-647 is the primary claim form, while IT-647-ATT is used when a taxpayer needs to report additional employees or additional information that doesn’t fit on the main form. You’ll use these forms when filing your annual New York State tax return for tax year 2025, attaching them to your personal income tax return or corporate franchise tax return depending on how your farm business is structured. Partners, shareholders, and members of pass-through entities also use portions of these instructions to determine their share of the credit passed through from the entity.

Because the credit ties directly to hours worked and wages paid during the calendar year, you can’t accurately complete these forms until your farm’s payroll records for the full tax year are finalized. That typically means completing this form during the same filing season as your regular income tax return, not earlier.

How to Get and Complete the Form

Form IT-647-I is available as a free PDF download directly from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance website. Like many state tax instruction booklets, it is not digitally fillable — you’ll need to print it out and complete the associated forms (IT-647 and IT-647-ATT) by hand using black ink, then attach them to your paper or e-filed return according to your tax preparation software’s instructions.

Before you start filling anything out, read through the entire instruction booklet once. It covers definitions of eligible employees, exclusions for certain types of workers, and the specific hourly thresholds that determine credit eligibility. Skipping ahead to the worksheets without understanding these definitions is the most common source of errors on this form.

If your farm business also claims other New York State credits, it’s worth reviewing related instruction sets to make sure you’re not missing anything applicable to your situation. Businesses in economic development zones, for example, might also want to check Form IT-605-I for investment and employment incentive credits, while property owners dealing with remediated land may benefit from reviewing Form IT-612-I. Farms that also produce alcoholic beverages as part of their operation should look at Form IT-636-I, since agricultural producers sometimes qualify for multiple overlapping credits in the same tax year.

Keep copies of your completed worksheets and supporting payroll documentation with your tax records. New York State can request verification of hours worked and wages paid to substantiate the credit claimed, so accurate recordkeeping throughout the year makes completing this form at tax time considerably easier.