No, not my recipe for a vodka Gibson; rather, this is the tax deduction promised to the syndicatees in Oconee Landing Property, LLC, Oconee Landing Investors, LLC, Tax Matters Partner, T.C. Memo. 2024-25, filed 2/21/24, for their investment. Judge Albert G. (“Scholar Al”) Lauber dissects this raid on the fisc in 78 (count ’em, 78) pages.

The deal does feature the usual suspects, appraisers W and VS, the law firm Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP, and some Dixieland Boondocks valued at 400.99% of the value Judge Scholar Al extracts at the trial. With enough somber reasoning and copious citation of precedent to satisfy even the most captious.

The promotional literature spoke of investment potential, but Judge Scholar Al can’t find any.

“The transaction at issue was persistently marketed to investors as a ‘conservation tax mitigation strategy.’ From beginning to end, it was priced as a multiple of the promised tax deduction. Mr. F acknowledged that the $49,000 offering price for class A interests in petitioner was derived directly from the four-to-one tax write-off promised to investors. That offering price bore no relationship whatsoever to the financial projections for the purported ‘investment strategy.’ The Court finds as a fact that the purported ‘investment strategy’ was not a viable business proposition, that it was never intended to be implemented, and that it was included as ‘window dressing’ in an effort to obscure the character of the transaction as a tax shelter.” T. C. Memo. 2024-25, at p. 28. (Name omitted).

There’s a lot more, but it comes down to the anatomy of a tax dodge.

Maybe it’s time for IRS to bar some practitioners, as they did when the façade easement dodge collapsed.