Landowner appeals landmark CRP case

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…