On May 9, conferees from the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate reached an agreement on a tax-reconciliation bill, a bill that doesn’t include any of the conservation incentives that the leaders of the nation’s preservation groups were hoping would be there.
   
But, said Rand Wentworth, president of the Land Trust Alliance, “Those provisions are still very much alive—including the expanded incentive for conservation easement donations the Senate approved last fall. But a final decision on them has been put off to later, as part of a second tax bill.”
   
So Wentworth is urging everyone who cares about preserving open space, natural resources or historic sites to call or email their Congressional representatives as soon as possible, to urge them to include these conservation incentives in that second tax bill.
   
Those incentives include provisions that are tremendously important to farmers, ranchers and moderate-income landowners—people who often do not have enough annual income to be able to deduct the full value of donating an easement that would keep their land in agricultural use, preserve wildlife habitats or protect historic sites.
   
The provisions would raise the maximum deduction a conservation-easement donor could take from 30 percent of their adjusted gross income in a year to 50 percent a year; would allow all qualified farmers and ranchers to deduct up to 100 percent of their adjusted gross income; and would increase the number of years over which a donor could take deductions from six years to 16 years.
   
To contact you representatives, go to www.house.gov/writreep. To contact y our senator, go to www.senate.gov/general/contact-information/senators.