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TRUST LAND TRUSTS ©2000 Jeff
Goodson/Washington Times
Article reprinted on this site with written permission by Jeff
Goodson |
DON'T TRUST LAND TRUSTS
Jeff Goodson
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There are few things more unseemly than abuse of the
federal death tax by rich environmentalists to cheat people out of their
land.
Until the 20th century, death taxes were only
passed as a short-lived tool to finance major military engagements.
According to Bruce Bartlett of the National Center for Policy Analysis,
the first death tax was passed in 1797 to finance naval rearmament and
ended four years later. The
second, passed in 1862 to finance the Civil War, was repealed in 1870.
The third, levied in 1898 to pay for the Spanish-American War, ended in
1902.
In 1916, a fourth death tax was passed to
finance World War I. That tax survives today, vivid testimony to the
immutable 20th century law that taxes are forever. Taking up to 55
percent of your money, the death tax has helped destroy the legacy of
five generations of hard-working
Americans. But it has finally turned into an albatross for fans of big
government. Despite a full court press to defend it by the liberal
media, 65 House and nine Senate Democrats recently voted for death tax
repeal.
Among the unhappy campers created by resurgence
of this issue are the 1,200 U.S. land trusts that sprang up after the
discovery of just how virulent the death tax could be as a land-use
control tool. When it became clear in the late 1970s that
environmentalists wanted a lot more land than they could pay for in fee
simple, two property-control strategies evolved that have since proven
highly effective. The first was use of environmental regulations
(especially wetland and endangered species regulations) to keep people
from using their land. This had the happy ancillary effect of devaluing
property that the environmentalists wanted to buy outright.
The second strategy was use of the tax code to
extort the right of property use from reluctant farmers and ranchers.
The death tax proved perfect for this purpose, and the rest is history.
About 80 percent of all private property acquired by the land trusts to
date, some 2.3 million acres, was obtained from private landowners in
the past 10 years.
Check out the literature of almost any land
trust in America, and you'll find that their primary sales pitch
revolves around "saving the legacy" of landowners from a tax
that would otherwise force their heirs to sell the family farm. The
pitch is simple: "We can protect your legacy. Just
sell us a land-use easement, and reduce property value to below the
estate tax threshold. Not only can your heirs keep the family farm, but
they can keep on farming it forever."
What the trusts don't advertise is that your
heirs can't do anything else with the land forever, except farm it and
pay taxes on it. So on your deathbed you're faced with the choice of
either giving 55 percent of your life's legacy to IRS, or giving up your
children's land use rights to the
environmentalists.
The mouthpiece for the land trusts is an
umbrella organization called the Land Trust Alliance (LTA). In testimony
before the House Ways and Means Committee last year, LTA recognized the
ability to reduce estate tax liability as "an important element in
land trusts' solicitation of easement donations." It also testified
that "the federal government has been a partner in (this) effort,
through the tax code and in many other ways." Indeed. And it is
this collusion between government and the land trusts that has robbed
many thousands of Americans of a priceless
heritage - the right of use of the family property.
Although horrified by the prospect of repeal,
environmentalists have been uncharacteristically quiet during the
death-tax debate. Maybe their focus groups tell them that to publicly
oppose repeal of a tax so damaging to rural families would be unseemly
for some of the richest tax-free organizations in America. The biggest
three land trusts have collective assets of more than $2 billion
dollars, and income at the largest - The Nature Conservancy - was over
$490 million in 1998 alone.
Copyright © 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved. |
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