An independent review found the IRS cut conservation easement property valuations by about 97 percent, often through desk reviews that never set foot on the land.
Just the News reported that Infinity Advisory Services examined more than 130 IRS property valuations tied to conservation easements and found the agency reduced those values by roughly 97 percent on average.
Many of those reviews never left the office. The firm’s paper said 62.4 percent were desk reviews. Only half of the files identified a site visit by an IRS appraiser. Six cases did not say either way.
That pattern matters because a conservation easement locks land against future development in exchange for a charitable tax deduction. Landowners still own the property. They give up the right to alter it under an agreement with a land trust or government agency. Congress codified the tool in 1980 after the IRS first allowed the deduction in 1964. The point was to reward private preservation of natural, agricultural, or scenic land.
When the deduction is based on the drop in value, the appraisal is the whole fight. Taxpayer experts and the IRS often land miles apart. One case in the review showed taxpayer experts valuing a property at $27,880,000. The IRS process brought it down to $400,000.
Infinity Advisory Services, a business valuation and litigation support firm, conducted the review. Bernie Donachie led the work. He had produced an earlier report on the same issue that Just the News also covered.
In 102 of the cases that involved geology appraisals, only 11 identified a technical specialist with a recognized professional qualification such as a licensed engineer or registered geologist. Donachie said some IRS appraisers lacked field expertise for the properties they judged. Examples cited included a hog hunter, a pit bull breeder, and a limousine company owner.
A Colorado farmer described in prior Just the News coverage spent nearly $1 million assembling a dozen experts, mineral geologists, drilling firms, solar engineers, tax attorneys, title and zoning specialists, plus soil tests and core samples. The agency still treated the file as another valuation fight.
The report argued the government’s approach went beyond hard bargaining. It pointed to a posture set before evidence was developed case by case:
"We believe that the record perhaps details that an analytic position was developed within the government before the examination program was built; enforcement action timed to external advocacy rather than to the development of case evidence; categorical public characterization of the outcome before adjudication; constraints on the government's own valuation professionals that foreclose the approaches capable of supporting a higher value; and a settlement schedule priced from a sample the government itself assembled,"
The IRS did not respond to a Just the News inquiry.
For years, property owners relied on the “highest and best use” standard tied to the congressional design of the deduction. That standard looks at the most profitable use that is legally allowed, physically possible, and financially realistic, including potential future development the easement forever blocks.
About a decade ago, according to the reporting, the IRS began treating these easements differently. Reviews leaned toward current sale values instead of the forgone future use the landowner surrendered. The new method lowers the charitable deduction. It also changes the incentive. If the tax benefit shrinks while the development restriction stays absolute, holding land for conservation looks less attractive next to selling or building.
Contracting added another layer. The IRS used outside appraisers through the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program. On August 11, 2026, the SBA finalized a major rule that replaced prior definitions of disadvantaged status with a race-neutral standard. The article framed the older contracting path as part of the expertise problem visible in the sample.
Conservation easements were sold to the public as a win for open space and private stewardship. Landowners accept permanent limits. In return they claim a deduction grounded in a professional appraisal of what was given up.
The Infinity review paints a different operational picture. More than 130 files. Roughly 97 percent value reduction. A majority handled as desk work. Geology opinions often without a licensed specialist on the record. One valuation cut from nearly $28 million to $400,000. A Colorado owner who spent close to a million dollars on outside experts still faced the same machinery.
The report’s authors believe the enforcement posture was set early, analytic conclusions before the examination program was fully built, public characterizations before adjudication, and settlement pricing drawn from a government-selected sample. Those are serious charges about process. The agency offered no reply in the Just the News account.
None of this requires inventing motives. The numbers are plain. When the government can cut claimed easement value by nearly all of it without walking the land, and when technical files lack the specialists the subject demands, lawful taxpayers who followed the statute face a stacked fight. That is not how a deduction Congress wrote to encourage conservation is supposed to work.
A tax system that rewards paper assumptions over site evidence will keep pushing landowners toward development instead of the permanent protections lawmakers said they wanted.
