The midterm elections are (mostly!) over. What’s coming next? No one is in a better position to tell you the answer than our Public Policy colleagues. Here for your reading and savoring are two pieces – a breakdown that spans all areas of law, and an analysis of what the election means specifically for tax … Continue Reading
For those who still had doubts, the IRS has now made it crystal clear: You can still issue tax-exempt bonds to advance refund most taxable bonds. In other words, the much-lamented “repeal of tax-exempt advance refunding bonds” in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from December 2017 isn’t ironclad. The repeal prevents the issuance of … Continue Reading
Hope you all had a nice summer – the blog is officially back from summer break. The Hutchinsons had a good one; we took Charlie to visit his grandparents at the beach in Pensacola, FL, where he went to Waffle House for the first time, and to visit his great-grandparents in Clinton, MS, where he … Continue Reading
When you enter into a closing agreement with the IRS to fix a problem with a tax-exempt bond issue, the IRS will often require a penalty payment in an amount relating to the “taxpayer exposure” on some or all of the bond issue. Taxpayer exposure “represents the estimated amount of tax liability the United States … Continue Reading
The IRS has given us new “remedial actions” for issuers of build America bonds and other direct pay bonds and for long-term leases of bond-financed property. These new rules are in Revenue Procedure 2018-26, and you can apply them immediately to cure the violations that the Revenue Procedure covers. The beauty of the remedial action … Continue Reading
Update: The President signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law on December 22, 2017. On that same date, he also executed the Continuing Resolution passed by Congress that permits the federal government to make expenditures through January 19, 2018. This Continuing Resolution also suspends the application of the PAYGO law in respect of the … Continue Reading
Signaling the end of our six-week ride in a runaway cement mixer, the Conference Committee for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has released its Conference Report, which represents a compromise version of the House and Senate-passed versions of the Act. Each chamber has the votes to enact the compromise bill; they’ll do it, and … Continue Reading
Are we having fun yet? To add further stress to the advance refunding issues that everyone is scrambling to close by the end of the year, subscriptions for SLGS will not be available on or after December 8, if not earlier. The most recent suspension of the application of the federal debt ceiling expires on … Continue Reading
Treasury has re-opened the sale of SLGS, now that the debt limit has been lifted through December 8. The SLGS window likely will close again around December 8, unless Congress takes further action. (Though the strictures of legal ethics and of logic would counsel us against insinuating that we had anything to do with it, we … Continue Reading
In case you missed it, we prepared a chart comparing the differences between the old arbitrage regulations and the new arbitrage regulations that were released recently. We published it as part of Joel’s comprehensive summary of the new regulations, but here is the chart by itself. The chart shows you the old language and the new … Continue Reading
The IRS has released final regulations that make a variety of changes to the arbitrage rules for tax-advantaged bonds. These regulations finalize proposed regulations from 2007 and portions of the infamous 2013 proposed regulations that are unrelated to issue price. To say it again, these final regulations do not change the current issue price rules. To recap the … Continue Reading
Read below for coverage of the recent hearing on the proposed regulations that would redefine the term “political subdivision” and the 127 comments submitted so far on the same topic. Plus learn more about a private letter ruling addressing a management contract that concludes there was no private business use even though payment of an … Continue Reading
This post has been edited to correct an error. The proposed regulations, if finalized, would apply to bonds issued no more than 90 days, not 30 days, after the publication of the final regulations in the Federal Register. Recently, Treasury proposed a new test for an entity to qualify as a “political subdivision” that is entitled to issue … Continue Reading
Treasury has released long-awaited proposed regulations that define the entities that are “political subdivisions” eligible to issue tax-exempt bonds. The Internal Revenue Code explicitly allows States, territories, possessions of the U.S., or the District of Columbia, or “any political subdivision thereof” to issue tax-exempt bonds. We’ll have more to say about this in coming days. These … Continue Reading
The Treasury Department has finalized regulations that it proposed in 2006 to address how to allocate tax-exempt bond proceeds and other sources of funds to a project and other related topics. Click here for a copy of the regulations – we’ll have more on these soon. … Continue Reading
