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There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only perso
by Aunche 3mo ago
There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land and nobody else can build there, so you get nearly all the benefits of this land while claiming a big tax deduction.
It doesn't sound like what is happening here, but I don't think you should be able to block development on land you donated indefinitely.
- ImPostingOnHN 3mo ago> I don't think you should be able to block development on land you donated indefinitely. On land you contractually purchased with the condition that development be blocked indefinitely? Then why sign the contract? If they wanted a time limit, they could have put it in the contract, or not signed the contract.
- phil21 3mo agoSuch contracts should simply not be legal. Past owners should in generally speaking terms not be able to limit development and land use decisions of future owners. It’s no longer your land. You sold it. Want to privately limit rights via contract? Consider not selling. If it gets zoned as parkland as part of a sale - great! You should be able to make that part of a sale contract. But if the governing body then votes to make it something else a decade later, that should simply be part of how things work. Old people ossifying things to how they prefer via preventing future generations to freely operate is not how I want a society to run. If anything the older you get the less say in the future you should have.
- alex_young 3mo agoConservation easements are a thing. Many people support protecting natural spaces and the law is composed of such general understandings.
- phil21 3mo agoYes, and they need to be flexible via public policy. If two generations from now some 10acre plot of land made into wildland is now surrounded by skyscrapers it probably makes a whole lot of sense for there to be a means for the local population to vote to remove that protection and turn it into affordable housing or whatnot. It gets nuanced - but in general speaking terms this sort of thing should never be forever set in stone because someone alive 100 years ago decided as such via a private contract. Many other ways to go about setting aside areas for conservation. Even conservation trusts make more sense to me. It’s still private, but they have an incentive to stay receptive to public comment and be a bit flexible. They might swap that 10 acres for another 100 acres somewhere else that creates a 1200 acre contiguous wilderness or what have you in order to stay relevant to contemporary needs while still staying true to the 250 year old mission. I simply do not think you should be able to dictate (via private means) what happens to a property after you sell it. That’s for the next person who owns it to decide - in accordance with current local zoning and land use guidelines.
- ImPostingOnHN 3mo ago> Even conservation trusts make more sense to me. That seems to be what was used here. Then the trust sold it for some cash.
- triceratops 3mo agoYou're right if the land is sold at market price. If it's sold at a discount because of the restrictions, then continuing to enforce those restrictions is valid. The land's value is permanently reduced due to the inability to build, and the price reflects that.
- Dylan16807 3mo agoThe price only reflects the future value out so far. The market price is based on a small number of decades. So for the purpose of respecting the discount, that reason dries up after a while.
- _heimdall 3mo agoStipulating that such contract must expire after a period of time seems more reasonable than saying such a contract isn't valid at all.
- triceratops 3mo agoSo add a time-limit to the restriction.
- bigstrat2003 3mo agoThen people won't donate their land to the city for the public good. So you still won't get your preferred outcome.
- bluefirebrand 3mo ago> Old people ossifying things to how they prefer via preventing future generations to freely operate is not how I want a society to run. What do you think the outcome of this would actually be? Someone wants to sell land to develop a parkland but they aren't allowed to dictate that it must be a parkland. So they just don't sell it ever. Now instead of a nice park it's a direlect lot for decades The answer to this problem isn't "fuck you old people we're taking your land and building data centers"
- _heimdall 3mo agoHow is this about old people ossifying things? The land owner chose to effectively give it to the city for free with a clear contract stipulating the use. The city took it knowing good and well what was in the contract. I see plenty of people here angry when the idea is floated of the US government opening up public land for mining, drilling, etc. You may not be one of them obviously, but how is this different?
- bluGill 3mo agoThere are some terms that are not allowed in a contract. I believe most deed restrictions are among those terms.
- Dylan16807 3mo ago> If they wanted a time limit, they could have put it in the contract, or not signed the contract. Most contracts are legally mandated to have time limits. I think that's a good policy. In this case an explicit number of years it has to stay a park would probably work better than an attempt at indefinitely defining the land.
- miltonlost 3mo agoPublic parks should not be developed on for the sake of the community. We need wild areas.
- triceratops 3mo agoWe need wild areas in the community? Why? Let the wild be in the wild.
- dylan604 3mo agoIt's farm land. Sounds pretty wild to me. Also, we have wild land set up as parks as in national/state parks. A park doesn't have to mean slides/swings and a bunch of ankle biters running around.
- freak42 3mo agoThere is less and less wild left over.
- triceratops 3mo agoIt won't be very wild sitting in the midst of a human settlement.
- PsylentKnight 3mo agoBecause people want/need accessible parks? Texas in particular has relatively very little parkland compared to its size, and its population-to-park ratio is getting increasingly out of whack
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 3mo agoThis one leads to some very odd lawsuits. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/24/corner-crossing-land-access-wyoming-lawsuit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/24/corner-cros...
- infinite_spin 3mo agoseems like this behavior would have a chilling effect on deathbed donations, especially when it sends the message gives: "screw you, we'll do what we want" I also don't see how this behavior is in the public good, even if the donor has some ulterior motive, governments are free to reject donations
- maxerickson 3mo agoIf you take one step further back, you can make the discussion about what deed restrictions are reasonable rather than about breaking the deed restriction. Like for an example with different dynamics, Menard's will say you can't use the building as a hardware store when they sell to build elsewhere. That's a stupid restriction for society to allow.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- PyWoody 3mo agoWhat you're describing sounds like what we call "in current use" in New Hampshire. I know Maine has something similar but I can't remember what they call it. You don't pay taxes on land in current use, but, if you or whomever you sold the land to, wants to build on it, they have to pay the back taxes first. It's a great for conservation.
- ortusdux 3mo agoYou can get a hefty tax break on forest land in WA state as long as you have a forestry plan in place, and the same goes for fields in Florida for cattle grazing.
- sandworm101 3mo agoThe law addressed this centuries ago. The general rule is that you can enforce such rules for a generation plus twenty years. That may seem like a long time, but the rule prevents the "cold hand from the grave" dictating how living people should act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities In this case, the farmer should have talked to a lawyer first. There are ways to set thing up to prevent misuse.
- selimthegrim 3mo agoApparently not in South Dakota.
- sandworm101 3mo agoIt can be done. A basic strategy would be to donate the land,but retain "air rights", retain an easment controlling all biuldings over a few feet tall. This is regularly done to protect views when selling land downhill of a house. Farms and parks would be OK, but not construction of a datacenter. But governments have eminant domain powers. They can always force a purchase if they really want to.
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago>There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land While I'm sure that's happened once or twice and serves as great fodder to get people of a certain ideological bent riled up, for the most part nobody is giving government land that's worth a shit. They're doing it to land that's effectively unusable due to regulation. Like if you own a strip that's a many acre 30ft wide along a steep river bank plus some space for a house (the lot layout could be the result of an old railroad or industrial thing) you gain literally nothing being on the hook for all that and you can't use it. That sort of thing is the typical case in which these sorts of things are invoked. It's more of a "well if you jerks care so much about what I do with it you can have it" type deal than a tax dodge.
- wahern 3mo agoIt's actually a pretty common thing: https://www.propublica.org/article/conservation-easements-the-billion-dollar-loophole https://www.propublica.org/article/conservation-easements-th... It even sprouted a cottage industry of REITs selling investors a product built around it, syndicated conservation easements: https://www.propublica.org/article/syndicated-conservation-easements-tax-scam-irs-biden https://www.propublica.org/article/syndicated-conservation-e...
- jmalicki 3mo agoThere is actually a ton of this. There is a huge Bay Area... not sure what to call it - public/private charity? - called the Peninsula Open Space Land Trust, that has a huge amount of donated land in the Silicon Valley, and is a very popular charity with very deep pockets that can buy land to basically turn into parkland. They have over $300 million in assets and own over 97,000 acres, and have partnerships with quasi-governmental agencys like the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District to administer those lands as parkland. The idea that noone is doing this is bullshit, and the idea that it is only done as a tax break is also bullshit. This organization is a leading reason why living in the Bay Area is valuable and isn't complete urban sprawl. I wouldn't be willing to pay Bay Area prices if not for the existance of the land preserved through organizations like this. https://openspacetrust.org/ https://openspacetrust.org/ https://www.openspace.org/ https://www.openspace.org/
- jvanderbot 3mo agoYeah at that point it should be in a perpetual trust or some other holding co who can fend off the city. Never trust your neighbors with your stuff.
- ghaff 3mo agoBasically you need to pay a lawyer to set up a trust which requires trustees if you care or donate to an institution with their own lawyers who you trust with a presumably long institutional timeline.
- ryandrake 3mo agoTrusts have always seemed to me to be pretty vulnerable. You have to trust the entire line of future trustees to actually implement what's written down in the agreement. Say I donate my property to a trust set up to keep that property a public park for 1000 years. I choose someone I trust to implement it when I'm dead. But, then that person has to choose someone they trust, and so on, and at some point in the future, inevitably it's going to fall into the hands of someone who would rather sell the land and spend the proceeds on hookers and blow.
- jvanderbot 3mo agoIt'd be nice to have a non-profit that honors these. Made of collective like-minded individuals. Protected by case law. You know, like a government is supposed to be.... But I suppose a big non-profit would work. Make one.
- ghaff 3mo agoEverything is ultimately vulnerable, especially once you're gone. No institution lasts forever. Some are probably more likely to endure than others but there are no guarantees.
- dylan604 3mo agoThis sounds like the better approach. Create a trust that runs a private park open to the public. This prevents the city from owning the land. The trust can also work out a deal with the city for tax benefits for running the park. The trust can also be set up so that a family member is always given an overriding voice while allowing the city to submit plans for proposed use, upgrades, permitting, etc.