a) Is the barn built and placed into service before 1937? 

He looks at me and asks me the above question. I said that if'n he goes over and looks at the door jamb there might be a sticker telling the month and year it was built. Or he could also check the vin number. 

The guy goes and looks. And what is so special about 1936 barns versus 1939 barns is beyond me. YeR just gonna have to take my word for it, I tell him Geez. It says in great big numbers on the front of it 1917.

b) Is The barn an ag structure used for the storage of grain, feed, or used for the housing of farm animals \, poultry, or farm machinery? 

You can clearly see that it's used for a storage shed. There's even a kitchen in it. He said that in the number of yeARS HE'S WORKED FOR THE COUNTY, NOBODY ELSE HAS EVER APPLIED FOR SUCH TAX BREAK. 

Denied he said. Apparently that one bale of straw wasn';t enough to persuade him. I'm trying it again this year. Got that leakin WD in thAR AN 4 BALES OF STRAW THIS TIME. wISH ME LUCK. 

PIMP...

Les-  the Iowa Barn exemption is more-or-less 'tied into' Iowa Barn Foundation's efforts to preserve agricultural history, particuarly focused on structures a century and older.

Your local government representative was probably following up on the IBF's support guidelines, as it's IBF that rallied for exemption for antique structures being retained for historical preservation purposes... the reason for the exemption, is so that landowners who have old structures, have an additional reason to keep and maintain old, unused barns, that would otherwise be left to fall, dismantled, or burned down.

...And Steve is dead-on correct-  when you pledge your barn for ANY assistance, particularly from IBF, the requirements are pretty extreme.  My barn is plenty old (first stood in 1886), but to be eligible for IBF recognition and support, I had to be using it for it's ORIGINAL AGRICULTURAL PURPOSE... it's a dairy barn...  and I'd have to restore it in the same form under which it was originally built... wood-frame sliding windows, cedar shake roof, etc.,  remove the electric lights and receptacles...

The first two were exclusive from the git-go.  First reason:  I'm a field service technician and engineer, not a dairy-farmer.  If I went into dairy farming, I could NOT do it with this structure, and those methods, in such a scale as to make it anything but a money-loosing path to early death.  Second... if I wanted to PRESERVE the building, it would need to be both physically, and economically within my means to maintain.  It's not my intention to make the building's daily care-and-maintenance my primary occupation.

So while many have approached me about joining the IBF and looking for their assistance, I've never pursued it, because it is impossible- it would cost me substantially more to try to restore and own, than the IBF's assistance AND a tax exemption would ever equate.  If I just kept using it as-is and maintaining it (at least, from an exterior perspective, using modern materials, it'd at least be useful enough to justify not knocking it down and putting a big pole shed in it's place.

Which has always confounded me... if they're so hot-to-trot to preserve history, why the hell wouldn't they try to do the FIRST step- make it so that there's a reason to at least PRESERVE THE BUILDING... an incentive to keep an old barn standing... because once they fall down or burn, there's nothing for the future....