Suppose you, or a friend, issued build America bonds or another form of direct payment subsidy bonds in 2009 or 2010, as permitted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to do your bit to stimulate aggregate demand during the depths of the Great Recession. You, or your friend, as applicable, did not, however, include … Continue Reading
Every year, the National Association of Bond Lawyers (“NABL”) hosts the Tax and Securities Law Institute (“TSLI”), which is an advanced conference with various workshops related to pressing issues confronting tax and securities lawyers in the public finance arena. Essentially, the annual TSLI is like Chrismukkah for tax and securities lawyers. This year’s meeting … Continue Reading
Back in the 60’s and 70’s, Tammy Wynette, country music legend, had a number of classic hits like Stand by Your Man and Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad. Many of her lyrics are legendary. But Tammy never wrote a technical advice memorandum (TAM). Too bad, because surely she would have made TAM’s a little … Continue Reading
After coverage here, here, here, and here, we return yet again with even more thoughts on the BAB reissuance memo. We explore to whom the BAB reissuance memo matters. Riddle me this, Batman: To whom does this memo matter?… Continue Reading
As Naomi Jagoda reported in The Bond Buyer yesterday ($), the National Association of Bond Lawyers has asked the IRS to revoke Advice Memorandum 2014-009, in which the IRS concludes that if you defease BABs with tax-exempt bonds, the BABs are treated as retired and reissued and are therefore no longer eligible for subsidy payments because the … Continue Reading
Naomi Jagoda has an article in The Bond Buyer ($) today with more commentary on Advice Memorandum 2014-009, where the IRS says that BABs don’t get the benefit of the rule that the defeasance of a “tax-exempt bond” doesn’t cause the bond to be reissued. Note that others in the community are raising the same point that was raised in yesterday’s … Continue Reading
Earlier this year, we wrote about issuers that are weary of losing interest subsidies to sequestration and that have paid off their direct pay bonds with tax-exempt bonds. We noted two main questions where the issuer doesn’t pay off the direct pay bonds immediately, but instead puts the refunding bond proceeds into a defeasance escrow … Continue Reading
As we told Naomi Jagoda of The Bond Buyer back in July ($), we are seeing many issuers that have become jaded with their BABs and want to refund them with tax-exempt bonds. Assuming that these issuers engaged a bond counsel firm that was wise enough – nay, truly heroic enough – to have foreseen … Continue Reading