On November 4, 2020, we all thought that the COVID-19 pandemic was going to be long over by now. We certainly did not think we were going to get so far down the Greek alphabet of variants of this virus. And, this author certainly did not think that she was going to have to keep … Continue Reading
This is the second in a series of posts about neutral principles that make for “good” tax-advantaged bond legislation. We pick up our series as the Senate prepares for a final vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill in the coming days. In the last post, we stated the general rule that a good piece of … Continue Reading
Remember back in the day when we would all gather for a transaction closing to get documents signed and enjoy a nice meal out at a restaurant together? Me neither. In fact, in-person closings were starting to fade long before the pandemic. Now that we have been closing transactions from the comfort [sic] of our … Continue Reading
Remember earlier this year when the novelty of working from home hadn’t worn off, when every day wasn’t Groundhog Day, when we hadn’t run out of Netflix to watch, and when we were all concerned about how to satisfy the in-person TEFRA hearing requirement for tax-exempt private activity bonds in the midst of a pandemic … Continue Reading
Earlier this month, we described Senate Bill 1763, which would authorize a new type of exempt facility bond to be issued for “qualified carbon capture facilities.” Well, on July 19, 2019, freshman House Republican Tim Burchett of Tennessee proposed the Carbon Capture Improvement Act, H.R. 3861, the text of which is identical to the Senate … Continue Reading
On June 10, 2019, Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Rob Portman (R-OH) introduced Senate Bill 1763 (the “Carbon Capture Bill”), which, if passed, would allow the issuance of exempt facility bonds for “qualified carbon dioxide capture facilities.” The Carbon Capture Bill has bipartisan support as this bill encourages continued use of carbon-generating natural resources by providing … Continue Reading
On May 3, 2019, the Internal Revenue Service released Private Letter Ruling 201918008. The IRS concluded in that PLR that an issuer of exempt facility bonds used a reasonable method, under all the facts and circumstances, to determine whether the term of an operating agreement entered into with a private party exceeded 80% of the … Continue Reading
On April 3, 2019, the IRS published Rev. Proc. 2019-17, which provides that multifamily housing projects (or, for those of you who prefer Grey Poupon, “qualified residential rental projects”) won’t violate the general public use requirement even if the landlord offers units of the project to certain specific groups. Congress had made this point clear for low-income … Continue Reading
On April 3, 2019, the Internal Revenue Service issued Rev. Proc. 2019-17, which provides that a qualified residential rental project will not fail the public use element of Internal Revenue Code Section 142(d), and therefore can be financed with exempt facility bonds (assuming, of course, that other requirements are satisfied[1]), if the project contains units that … Continue Reading
The most recent partial shutdown of the federal government has halted many operations of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, including those of the Internal Revenue Service. The shutdown has, however, evidently left untrammeled the Treasury Department’s ability to promulgate regulations. On Friday, December 28, the Treasury released final regulations under Internal Revenue Code Section … Continue Reading
On June 1, 2016, the New York Transportation Development Corporation issued over $2.25 billion in tax-exempt bonds as part of a public-private partnership to redevelop the Central Terminal building (known as Terminal B to passengers) at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. As The Bond Buyer reported, the deal broke all kinds of records – it … Continue Reading
The title of this post is taken from an observation that a client once made when the strictures of the notice, hearing, and approval requirements set forth in Internal Revenue Code Section 147(f), which with limited exceptions apply to all issues of tax-exempt private activity bonds, worked to prevent a hoped-for use of proceeds of … Continue Reading
The flexibility to reallocate proceeds to expenditures using an accounting method other than direct tracing has been a well-recognized and much-appreciated opportunity under the allocation and accounting rules of IRC section 141. The former proposed section 141 regulations (REG-140379-02, Sept. 26, 2006) (“Proposed Regulations”), now replaced by the final section 141 regulations issued October 27, … Continue Reading
The Bond Buyer ($) has a piece by our own Roddy Devlin and Bruce Gabriel today, wrapping up the year in public-private partnerships in 2015, and looking forward to the future. They note one particularly important tax-focused point – Congress has enacted the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, which removes the prohibition against combining tax-exempt bonds for … Continue Reading
Roddy Devlin and Greg Johnson, two of our experts on Public-Private Partnerships (which you may know as “P3s”), have an excellent overview in The Bond Buyer today ($) of how the federal, state, and local governments in the United States are warming up to the idea of using P3s for infrastructure projects. If you’re more of a … Continue Reading
In 1971, Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) released the song, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain”. One line in the song says “When it’s over, so they say, it’ll rain a sunny day, I know, shinin’ down like water”. We have to concede that when it comes to song lyrics, poetic license occasionally must trump the … Continue Reading
The new tax-advantaged bond programs in the 2009 Stimulus Act (P.L. 111-5) appeared out of nowhere (or, in the case of direct pay bonds, almost out of nowhere), and left many in the tax-exempt bond community swimming in new concepts for several months. Once everyone finally worked through the new questions (just what was a “permitted sinking fund … Continue Reading
The Bond Buyer recently published a commentary ($) prepared by Squire Patton Boggs’ lawyers Mike Cullers and Roddy Devlin, on the proposal in the Obama Administration’s federal government budget for fiscal year 2016 to expand exempt facility bonds to include a new category – Qualified Public Infrastructure Bonds. Please see this commentary for a primer on the applicable … Continue Reading