The conviction last week of a scam artist for a scheme involving Colorado’s conservation easement program provides an ironic backdrop to a legislative plan to limit officials from cracking down on similar fraud.
Senate Bill 44 would actually bar the Department of Revenue from contesting the validity of any conservation easement donated prior to 2014 unless the appraiser has already been “convicted of fraud or misrepresentation in connection with preparing the appraisal.”
Seriously? Talk about tying the hands of regulators and tax collectors.
Nearly every year, it seems, people who say they are victims of callous state tax collectors who demand repayment on discredited conservation easements from years ago try to secure relief from the legislature. We feel for them — up to a point. Some indeed were victims of unscrupulous con men like the just-convicted scoundrel Alan DeAtley, found guilty on 22 charges including forgery, theft and tax evasion involving $3.5 million in ill-gotten gains.
But let’s face it: Lots of people who participated in these easement deals gone bad during the program’s early years knew or should have known that they were too good to be true, that the bonanza was suspect. If the government pays you a tax credit or other benefit that you don’t deserve, you shouldn’t expect to be held harmless once the problem comes to light — even if you were blindsided by the nature of the deal you struck.
In collecting back taxes owed, the state of Colorado is simply doing its job.
Conservation land easements allow landowners to take tax deductions and earn credits in exchange for preventing future development of their property and limiting its uses. But the program was exploited years ago by landowners who obtained artificially high appraisals for property they placed in easements — thereby inflating their tax benefits, too.
The easement program has been reformed, and seems to be working as intended. But that doesn’t mean cleanup of the mess left from its early days should be called off.
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