This past year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in Welby Gardens v. Adams County Bd. of Equalization that greenhouses are to be taxed as commercial property rather than agricultural property.
This decision overruled the standing custom based on the 1990 Morning Fresh Farms case, which found that properties used to produce agricultural products are agricultural. In Welby, the Court found that there must be "some nexus between the agricultural product and the land on which the product was produced" for the land to be classified as agricultural for tax purposes.
The Court declined to provide any concrete guidelines regarding the sort of connections between the land itself and the product are sufficient to benefit from the tax preferences for agricultural property. However, it is evident that having plants growing in pots full of soil not from the land itself is not enough of a nexus to classify the land as agricultural.
Kenneth S. Kramer
Berenbaum, Weinshienk & Eason PC
[email protected]
American Property Tax Counsel (APTC)
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
