Conservation Reserve Payment checks have been called “rent” for nearly 30 years, treated much like similar payments during the 1950s Soil Bank and free from self-employment taxes. But unless a 2013 Tax Court case is overturned by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals later this year, non-farmers could owe whopping new 15.3 percent self-employment income tax on their contract proceeds. At stake is not only SE tax treatment of about a third of the acreage enrolled in the 27-million-acre CRP, but a damaging precedent that could affect conservation easements and other types of USDA-landowner contracts, legal scholars and wildlife groups maintain. Read more at DTN/The Progressive Farmer…