Easements: An Important Preservation Tool Threatened

On January 27, 2005, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) issued a report calling for changes in the tax code that would drastically limit the federal tax incentive for donations of preservation and conservation easements. These changes would effectively dismantle federal tax incentives for easements used both for historic preservation and for land conservation.

The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia has accepted preservation - and in a few instances, conservation - easements since 1979. It currently holds easements on more than 180 historic properties in the Philadelphia region, ranging from downtown commercial high-rises to suburban estates, from 18th-century townhouses to industrial sites.

The Art Deco lobby of the Atlantic Building (Spruce and South Broad Streets, Philadelphia) is protected - along with the building's exterior - by a Preservation Alliance easement.

The Alliance's easement program is active and effective. But the Alliance, along with its sister organizations across the country which also hold preservation easements, is concerned about the deleterious and misguided effects the JCT recommendations would have on future preservation easement donations.

Preservationists should understand the threat to this important preservation incentive, and fight to save the conservation easement deduction. To learn more about this threat and how to respond, visit the web page of the National Trust for Historic Preservation at www.nationaltrust.org/law/easements_alert.html or call the Preservation Alliance at 215.546.1146 x 21. For more information on the Alliance's easement program, click here.