Marginal Property Tax Effects of Conservation Easements: A Vermont Case Study

Abstract

Conservation easements allow landowners to transfer their land's development rights to another entity, usually a nontaxable conservation organization. Conservation reduces the town's tax base, necessitating a tax rate increase to maintain service levels. However, conserving land also decreases the supply of developable land and provides open space amenities that may be capitalized into the value of nearby properties. These effects may offset the decrease in the tax base caused by the easement. Using a sample of twenty-nine Vermont towns, we show that private conservation easements increase property tax rates in the short run, but are tax-neutral or tax-suppressing in the long run. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Consumer interactions and influences on farmers' market vendors

“…The development of local agricultural markets has the potential to add value to farm sales as supply chains are shortened, as well as the potential to generate social and environmental benefits for the community, such as agricultural open space, a public good that contributes to the scenic value of communities 8,9 . Likewise, farm business managers with a keen eye to the external benefits of their local production may be able to capitalize on the added value of marketing with local place identities [10][11][12] .…”

Assessing the local economic impacts of land protection

“…We found overall that protection boosted, rather than depressed, local economies. However, future work should also extend analysis to additional local indicators, most importantly property values and tax revenues (e.g., King & Anderson ; Heintzelman ; Reeves et al. ), which are crucial for the delivery of local public goods.…”

“…We found overall that protection boosted, rather than depressed, local economies. However, future work should also extend analysis to additional local indicators, most importantly property values and tax revenues (e.g., King & Anderson 2004;Heintzelman 2010;Reeves et al 2018), which are crucial for the delivery of local public goods. Future work should also combine analysis of economic and land-use change indicators to understand the interaction between development threat, conservation effectiveness, and the net economic impacts of protection.…”

Protection privée de la biodiversité et fiscalisation du marché de la wilderness : une histoire de la conservation volontaire au Québec (1980-2014)

“…Comme les mesures de conservation volontaire sont souvent accompagnées de restrictions d'usage importantes, et ce, souvent à perpétuité, leur impact à long terme sur l'évaluation foncière des terres sous réserve est discuté dans la littérature. De manière générale, ces études indiquent que si, à court terme, soit lors du retrait de ces terrains des régimes d'usages agroforestiers traditionnels, une certaine baisse de valeur foncière peut être observée, à moyen et à long terme les propriétaires de terrains protégés grevés de servitudes de conservation semblent pouvoir tirer profit de la valeur ajoutée que ces mesures confèrent à leur propriété sur le marché (Anderson et Weinhold, 2008;King et Anderson, 2004;Lawley et Towe, 2014;Phillips, 2000). En ce sens, des études en droit foncier proposent certaines réformes des programmes gouvernementaux de retours fiscaux pour favoriser la volonté de vendre (willingness to sell) des propriétaires fonciers (Deal, 2013;Levert, Stevens et Kittredge, 2009), ou pour la mieux connaître (Brown et al, 2011).…”