Land Trust AllianceLand Trust Alliance

We must enact the Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act

For more than 35 years, the Land Trust Alliance has been the voice of land conservation in the United States. 

As a leader in this field, the Alliance has advocated strong support for the permanent conservation easement tax incentive – a powerful tool that has helped tens of thousands of Americans with truly charitable intent conserve their land voluntarily.

Conservation easements are charitable donations in which donors give up something of value for the public good. Tax deductions for these donations are incentives to do the right thing, and there is evidence that they are an effective way to spur people to conserve their land – and a cost-effective way for the government to conserve lands.

Unfortunately, in recent years, brazen and continued abuse of conservation donations by a few bad actors have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. These bad actors and these transactions must be stopped.

Over the last several years, the land trust community, IRS and DOJ have taken aggressive action to stop these transactions. Unfortunately, as IRS data released by Senators Grassley and Wyden on September 21 revealed, that not only does this abuse harm taxpayers, but federal actions to date have been unable to halt this profiteering in the face of such massive profits for promoters of these deals — abuse that has ballooned from $6 billion in claimed deductions in 2016 to $6.8 billion in 2017 to $9.2 billion in 2018 — for a total of $36 billion since 2010.

  • June 2015 – The Land Trust Alliance releases its first advisory to members on the threat posed by abusive tax shelters
  • December 2016 –The IRS issues Notice 2017-10, identifying and classifying certain highly overvalued conservation easement transactions as “listed transactions” – a transaction defined as a tax avoidance transaction by the IRS
  • December 2019 – The U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil complaint against promoters of an allegedly abusive conservation easement syndication tax scheme. According to the complaint, the 96 transactions at issue resulted in over $2 billion in claimed federal tax deductions
  • August 2020 – The U.S. Senate Finance Committee releases a thorough and revealing report on abuse of the federal conservation tax incentive. The bipartisan investigation that yielded this report, led by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), concluded the ongoing abuse is egregious and must end. The report also makes it clear in the starkest terms why Congress must take action now.

Luckily, a solution is ready for Congress to pass. The Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act will safeguard taxpayers by stopping these bad actors from their profiteering, all while allowing conservation donations motivated by charity to continue unimpacted. This legislation is concise, sensible, and ready for passage in the House and Senate.

The Alliance is immensely grateful to this Committee and our many congressional champions who have continued to support private-sector land conservation as a bipartisan issue that benefits all Americans. Now, we must enact the Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act to stop this abuse.