Donating TriBeCa Facade Easement Is Like Renouncing Your Super Powers

If you have property that you would like to be preserved in its present form, there is nothing so close to a free lunch as the donation of an easement.  Out in the country, you will call it a conservation easement.  In the big city it is a facade easement.  In either case the principle is the same.  You could make a freaking fortune turning your cow pasture into the site for a Walmart or your historic brownstone into a McDonalds, but you give up that right to a bunch of nosy do-gooder not for profit types, along with a cash donation (That is why it is “close” to a free lunch.) who will make sure you or your heirs do not yield to that temptation.  For that you get a charitable deduction.  As with any charitable donation of property, there is a valuation issue.  That is what they were arguing about in a recent Tax Court case – Loren Dunlap, et ux., et al. v.Commissioner, TC Memo 2012-126 .

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2012/05/07/donating-tribeca-facade-easement-is-like-renouncing-your-super-powers/