The tax deduction enhancements (for qualified conservation easements), which are contained in the 1996 Pension Protection Act, expired at the end of 2007. However, the Farm Bill that the Senate passed in December 2007 includes a permanent extension of these enhancement provisions. The House Farm Bill doesn’t have a similar provision. A House-Senate conference to work out a final Farm Bill will settle the issue, but the Land Trust Alliance commented in January 2008 that, “The House and Senate bills are big (1,500 pages), complex, and very different – so a final agreement will probably take weeks to finalize.”

Find out more at http://www.lta.org/publicpolicy/index.html