A farmland preservation credit claim may be filed using Schedule FC, Schedule FC-A, or both. However, a credit may not be claimed on the same acreage using both Schedule FC and Schedule FC-A.

• If you have exclusive ag zoning (A-1 EX) and a new agreement or modified agreement (since July 1, 2009)
  
  Then you should file your claim using Schedule FC-A and $12.50 per acre.
  
  
• If you have exclusive ag zoning (A-1 EX) and no agreement
  
  Then you should file your claim using Schedule FC-A and $10.00 per acre.
  
  
• If you have a new agreement or modified agreement (since July 1, 2009)
  
  Then you should file your claim using Schedule FC-A and $10.00 per acre.
  
  
• If you have exclusive ag zoning (A-1 EX) and an old agreement (before July 1, 2009)
  
  Then you may choose to claim the credit using Schedule FC (at 80% of calculated credit based on having an agreement) or Schedule FC-A (at $10.00 per acre based on exclusive ag zoning).
  
  
• If you have land in a farmland preservation area (sec. 91.01(16), Wis. Stats.) covered by an agricultural easement purchased under sec. 93.73, Wis. Stats.
  
  Then you should file your claim using Schedule FC-A and $10.00 per acre.



• If you have an agreement entered into before July 1, 2009
  
  Then you should file your claim for the credit using the Schedule FC at the 80% level.
  
  
• If you have land under an agreement from before July 1, 2009, and other land that is in exclusive ag zoning, you may choose to:
  
  

  1. Claim the credit on Schedule FC using the multiple municipality proration worksheet or

  2. Claim the credit for the land under an agreement on Schedule FC at 80% of calculated credit and claim the credit for the land under zoning on Schedule FC-A at $10.00 per acre.

If you don't know how your land is zoned, contact your county zoning office.

Note: A few agreements were under application prior to July 1, 2009, but were not executed until after that date. One of these agreements is considered entered into prior to July 1, 2009, if 1) the application for the agreement was submitted to the county clerk between January 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009, and 2) the agreement was entered into on or after July 1, 2009.

The department cannot provide that information to anyone but the person who claimed the credit. You must contact the property owner to obtain the information.

The payback portion of the program is handled by the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP). Contact DATCP at (608) 224-4621, (608) 224-4611, or DATCPWorkingLands@wisconsin.gov. DATCP will inform you of whether the farmland can be taken out of the program. DATCP will send you the necessary forms to complete. In general:

• For agreements applied for prior to July 1, 2009, the landowner must pay back the last ten years of tax credits received by any owners of the land.
  
  
• For agreements applied for after July 1, 2009, or agreements modified after that date, the landowner must pay a conversion fee that is equal to 3 times the per acre value, times the number of acres being terminated or released from the agreement, for the year in which the farmland preservation agreement is terminated or the land is released, of the highest value category of tillable cropland in the city, village, or town in which the land is located, as specified by the Department of Revenue under sec. 73.03(2a), Wis. Stats.
  
  

You should review all tax returns filed during the previous year, including any late and amended returns, and any adjustment notices you received from the department to determine how much farmland preservation credit (FPC) was received. If you need this information, you must write to the Department of Revenue, PO Box 8906, Madison, WI 53708-8906. This information cannot be furnished over the telephone, by email, or by fax.

For more information see the section titled Receipt of Credit Is Income in Publication 503, Wisconsin Farmland Preservation Credit.

When we request copies of the tax bills, it is for one of the following reasons:

• No real estate tax bills were attached;
• Copies of tax bills for the wrong years were attached;
• Copies of the tax receipts instead of the actual tax bills were attached;
• Copies of the tax bills were incomplete; or
• Copies of the tax bills were illegible.
  
  

We need copies of the actual real estate tax bills because they are the only documents that provide all of the necessary information, such as the year, name, number of acres, whether there are any unpaid prior year taxes, whether there are any improvements on the parcel, and the assessed values. Tax receipts provide some, but not all, of this information.

Often, the tax bills attached are for the taxes the claimant paid during the claim year, not the taxes levied during the year. While a cash-basis claimant may deduct the taxes paid during the year as an expense on federal Schedule E or F, claimants must use the taxes levied during the claim year for farmland preservation credit purposes.

The tax bills that are submitted need to be complete copies. If parts of the parcel numbers or legal descriptions are cut off, we may not be able to determine if those parcels are subject to farmland preservation credit. If photocopies are too light to read or are blurry, we have the same problem.

The farmland preservation credit is available to eligible landowners located in farmland preservation zoning districts, who own land covered by an agricultural conservation easement purchased under sec. 93.73, Wis. Stats., except that if the farm is only partially covered, the qualifying acres calculation includes only those acres that are covered by the agricultural conservation easement and located in a farmland preservation area, as defined in sec. 91.01 (16), Wis. Stats., and/or who own land covered by a farmland preservation agreement signed or modified after July 1, 2009.

Eligible farm owners who choose to claim this tax credit on their income tax return must meet state soil and water conservation standards on the entire farm. More information for farmers and other landowners can be found on the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection's website under Farmland Preservation Tax Credits.

Contact your county Land Conservation Department if you have more questions.

The Certificate of Compliance is issued by the county land conservation department to certify that you are in compliance with soil and water conservation plan and standards and to verify the number of acres certified at each rate.

All landowners who claim the farmland preservation tax credit with Schedule FC-A beginning in 2016 will need a CoC number. This includes landowners who claim under a farmland preservation zoning ordinance, landowners who have land covered by an agricultural conservation easement purchased under sec. 93.73, Wis. Stats., except that if the farm is only partially covered, the qualifying acres calculation includes only those acres that are covered by the agricultural conservation easement and located in a farmland preservation area, as defined in sec. 91.01 (16), Wis. Stats., and landowners who have a farmland preservation agreement signed or modified after July 1, 2009. Landowners will need to enter this number on Schedule FC-A in order to claim the credit in tax years 2016 and after.

For more information on the CoC number, visit DATCP's Farmland Preservation Program Soil and Water Conservation Compliance FAQs.

All landowners who claim the farmland preservation tax credit with Schedule FC beginning in 2023 will need to provide the 5-digit agreement number(s) located on their farmland preservation agreements issued by the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP).

If a transfer occurred and/or there is a transfer agreement, you must provide the first 5-digits from the transfer agreement or the 5-digit number from the original agreement and include a copy of the transfer agreement with the required attachments.

For information on obtaining your 5-digit agreement number, contact DATCP by calling (608) 224-4621, (608) 224-4611, or by emailing DATCP at DATCPWorkingLands@wisconsin.gov.

An executed agreement has all information in the box on the front of the agreement, as well as the first paragraph blanks, completed by staff from the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. The back of the agreement is also signed by them in two different areas.

An unexecuted agreement is blank in some of these areas.

A copy of the executed agreement must be attached to the claim or on file at the Department of Revenue. A copy may be requested if one is not available to the department.

You should contact the renter to find out what crops are being produced on your farmland and what happens to those crops. If the crops are sold outright, you would use those amounts to determine whether the Schedule FC gross profits requirement or Schedule FC-A gross revenues requirement was met.

If the crops being produced on your farmland are fed to cattle which in turn produced milk that was sold, the renter should compute a ratio to prorate the milk receipts. The numerator of the ratio is the amount of crops produced on your farmland which was fed to those cattle, and the denominator is the total amount of crops fed to those cattle. Multiply the milk receipts by this ratio to arrive at an approximate amount of profits considered produced on your farmland.

Possibly. If the farmland is already subject to a farmland preservation agreement, you must know the effective date of that agreement. In order to claim the farmland preservation credit (FPC) using Schedule FC, the agreement must have been in effect on July 1 of the claim year. In order to claim the FPC using Schedule FC-A, the agreement must have been in effect on December 31 of the claim year. If there is no farmland preservation agreement in effect for that year, no credit for past years can be allowed based on having an agreement.

If the land is included in a farmland preservation zoning district, the zoning classification must have been in effect at the end of the taxable year to which the claim relates.

For farmland subject to exclusive agricultural zoning or to a farmland preservation agreement, you must have had a soil and water conservation plan on file with the county conservation office and been following that plan for those years. With either document, you must also have met all other FPC requirements for each applicable claim year.

The FPC claims must be filed no later than 4 years after the unextended ​due date of that year's income tax return. For tax year 2020, the original due date for filing certain Wisconsin income tax returns was postponed. See the "Due Date" column in the Updated Due Dates for 2020 Wisconsin Tax Returns chart for the starting date of the 4-year period to file a claim for the FPC.

Schedule FC filers:

If the farmland is subject to a farmland preservation agreement entered into prior to July 1, 2009, and not modified after July 1, 2009, you may claim that portion of the taxes allocated to you on the closing statement, provided you met all other FPC requirements.

Schedule FC-A filers:

You must have been the owner of the farm for which the credit is being claimed at the end of the taxable year, as well as have met all other FPC requirements.

The farmland preservation agreement must be modified to claim the credit on Schedule FC-A. You can contact the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) to obtain the ap​plication to modify the agreement. In general, the modified agreement would require the expanded soil and water conservation requirements and require a conversion fee to remove lands from the agreement. Contact DATCP at (608) 224-4621, (608) 224-4611, or DATCPWorkingLands@wisconsin.gov.

You should contact the local planning and zoning office to determine whether the land is within the certified farmland preservation zoning district. This could be at the county, town, city, or village government.