In the Dakotas, many of our churches are connected to agriculture. We have members that our farmers, retired farmers, and/or children who inherited farmland from their folks. The scary thing about farmland transactions is the tax basis. Most farmland has been held for decades so the tax basis could easily be $100/acre or less. If you sell that land, you’ll have to pay capital gains on all the gain over those decades.
If you have people in your church that are considering cashing out of the farm or maybe they don’t have a next generation willing or able to take over the farm, they may be wanting to donate that land to the church. You would be surprised by how many churches have received a quarter of farmland that is now a huge benefit to their current ministry.
Check out the video below:
Useful Links
- Contact the Dakotas UM Foundation to learn more about how this is done: https://www.dakotasumf.org
- IRS Publication 526 (p 11): https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p526.pdf