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Conservation Easements: Design Flaws, Enforcement Challenges, And Reform, Roger Colinvaux
Conservation Easements: Design Flaws, Enforcement Challenges, And Reform, Roger Colinvaux
Scholarly Articles
The charitable deduction for conservation easements promises a conservation benefit, lasting forever. Millions of acres have been protected by deductible conservation easements. On average over $1.5 billion are claimed in easement contributions each year, not including corporate contributions. The deduction, however, has serious problems. As use of the incentive has grown, doubts about the public benefit conveyed by conservation easements and significant enforcement difficulties have led to increased scrutiny of land trusts and to a growing chorus of calls for reform of the tax benefit and state laws governing easements. This Essay argues that it is because the tax incentive …
The Conservation Easement Tax Expenditure: In Search Of Conservation Value, Roger Colinvaux
The Conservation Easement Tax Expenditure: In Search Of Conservation Value, Roger Colinvaux
Scholarly Articles
Federal tax law has long provided a tax benefit for charitable contributions of easements for conservation purposes. A fundamental problem with this conservation easement tax expenditure is that the measure for the tax benefit – lost economic development value – is erroneous. Use of such an erroneous measure obscures the conservation benefits of the program by focusing attention and resources on divining a largely extraneous and unhelpful number. Further, to a considerable extent, the easement program is reflexively justified and understood based on this false measure, as if it represented the conservation value of the program. The Article argues that, …