Tax Court rejects ‘cash grab’ of conservation easement

You know your case is in trouble when the Court opens its opinion with “the old question: ‘Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?’”

Such was the problem for Lake Jordan Holdings, LLC, an organization that bought 165 acres of land in rural Elmore County, AL, for $583,000 in 2017 and a few months later granted a conservation easement on 157 acres, for which it claimed a $12,740,000 charitable contribution tax deduction on its tax return.  It was “yet another in the depressingly long line of cash grabs dressed up in eleemosynary clothing,” the Tax Court said.