Conservation Easements have helped thousands of families protect millions of acres of open space. With a conservation easement, you permanently protect your land without giving up ownership. You can continue to live on it and use it, and can sell it or pass it on to heirs. What's more, you can possibly reduce taxes; future estate taxes, federal income taxes in the year of donation, and tax deduction.

If you need to realize some immediate income from your land, yet would like the property to be protected, a bargain sale to a land trust might be the answer. You sell the land for less than its full market value. This not only makes it more affordable for the land trust, but offers several benefits to you: provides cash, avoids some capital gains tax, and entitles you to a charitable income tax deduction based on the difference between the land's fair market value and its sale price.

An outright donation of land to a land trust releases you from the responsibility of managing the land and can provide substantial income tax deductions and estate tax benefits (while avoiding any capital gains taxes that would have resulted from spelling the property).Most important, if the land is donated because of its conservation values, it will protected.

If you donate a conservation easement that meets federal tax code requirements, the value of the easement can be treated as a charitable gift and deducted from income tax (to the extent your particular tax situation allows). For income tax purposes, the value of the easement is the difference between the land's value with the easement and its value without the easement. If a property is worth $500,000 unrestricted, for example, and an easement that precludes further development is placed on it that drops its value to $200,000, the value of the donation is $300,000. Easement values vary greatly; in general the highest easement values result from very restrictive conservation easements on tracts of developable open space under intense development pressure.

In order to qualify as a charitable donation, an easement must meet federal tax code requirements - in essence, must provide public benefit by permanently protecting important conservation resources. However, an easment does not have to cover all of the property, preclude all use of development, or allow public access to qualify.

Because a conservation easement lowers the property's fair market value, it can also result in lower property taxes.