As we prepare for Congress to return from the August recess next week, ML Strategies is pleased to share our Fall Preview highlighting what to look for in September and beyond. Over the August recess we have continued to advocate on behalf of NAHEFFA, and hope you’ll find the tax reform portion of this preview of interest.
Please let us know of any questions – and feel free to share this preview with your colleagues. NABL Submits Infrastructure Proposals
The National Association of Bond Lawyers has put together eight legislative tax-exempt bond proposals to facilitate building and maintaining infrastructure. The proposals have been sent to the Treasury Department, the National Economic Council, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee. The eight proposals are: 1. Create a new category of private activity bond for privately-operated roads, tunnels, and bridges. 2. Provide a direct-pay alternative to tax-exempt financing. 3. Increase the dollar limits for bank-qualified bonds and apply the provisions as revised to conduit borrowers. 4. Allow for greater use of tax-exempt bonds for manufacturing facilities. 5. Facilitate charter school financing by eliminating a mortgage prohibition. 6. Allocate additional volume cap for various tax-advantaged bonds and increase volume cap for tax-exempt private activity bonds. 7. Eliminate the unrelated or disproportionate component of the private business use test and the dollar limits on private business use. 8. Permit refunding of bonds where less than 85 percent of proceeds has been spent. Last week, the following Joint Statement on Tax Reform was released by what are known as the “Big 6” of tax reform representing the Administration and House and Senate leadership. The primary take-away from the statement is that Republicans are dropping their effort to move the U.S. toward a consumption based tax system and will not insist upon the proposed border adjustment tax (BAT) in tax reform.
What does this mean for NAHEFFA? In short, by removing the primary obstacle of BAT, tax reform is clearly intended as the next big legislative push when Congress returns from the August recess. We have laid the groundwork for protecting tax-exempt bonds by meeting with congressional offices during the Spring Conference, submitting comments to House Ways & Means and Senate Finance, and other ad hoc outreach by individual authorities to your congressional delegations. Over the past week, MLS has been sharing the Ways & Means and Finance comments with NAHEFFA footprint members who serve on those committees, in addition to our ongoing advocacy with committee staff and personal office tax staff for committee members. The report attached here details a double-header of hearings held yesterday by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.
The first hearing, entitled “Comprehensive Tax Reform: Prospects and Challenges” had a panel of former Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury for Tax Policy representing the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations discuss important challenges facing the tax code and gave recommendations for Congress as it begins to examine pursuing comprehensive tax reform. The second hearing, entitled “Hearing to Consider the Nomination of David J. Kautter to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury” featured Mr. Kautter answering questions on his business background and thoughts on the tax code as preparation for his nomination to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy. All of the panelists from both hearings touched upon common themes regarding the need to simplify the tax code, reform the international tax policy of the United States, and lower the corporate tax rate. While municipal bonds were not mentioned directly, Mr. Kautter did say twice that as a part of tax reform all provisions of the tax code should be reviewed. Please let us know of any questions. Please find here an update on tax reform, outlining the current state-of-play and our predictions for what comes next. Also attached here are comments submitted to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee by NAHEFFA, the American Hospital Association (AHA), and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) detailing our priorities for tax reform related to the preservation of tax-exempt bonds. You will also find attached here a letter, signed by NAHEFFA, which Chuck Samuels helped to prepare and was sent to the Senate Finance Committee by the Public Finance Network (PFN). As you will read, the debate on tax reform is heating up and once health care is resolved could be the next big legislative item to be taken up by Congress. Ongoing engagement with our congressional champions is crucial. We continue to work with our contacts here in Washington to stay apprised of developments and to advocate on behalf of NAHEFFA, and we are available to assist any NAHEFFA members in your own outreach to your congressional delegation members. If there are any questions, please let us know. In response to NAHEFFA’s long standing request for specific guidance on how MSRB rule G-42 affects conduit financing, the MSRB released this letter and public guidance. I have just quickly waded through it but the essence seems to be that MSRB accepts that various arrangements ,such as issuers paying for MA’s for borrowers, sharing MA advice with borrowers, borrowers sharing MA advice with issuers, or both parties sharing MA firms are not inherently or necessarily improper or unmanageable and may be valuable. But, a variety of considerations for the MA apply, not only disclosures to both parties but considerations of how to and whether conflicts can be managed.
Since this guidance does not seem to offer clear dividing lines or safe harbors, it will be interesting, as you, your lawyers and the MA’s you work with review this, to get feedback on the utility and consequences of this guidance. Can it be used to justify and move forward with some current arrangements or is the effect that MA’s will be clearly separated into the camp of working for and assisting issuers only or borrowers only? Anyways, I would appreciate any feedback. The guidance is final but MSRB will accept comments and questions on this guidance which is subject to revision. MSRB has issued this “Compliance Advisory for Municipal Advisors.”
http://www.msrb.org/~/media/Files/Resources/Municipal-Advisor-Compliance-Advisory-June-2017.ashx NAHEFFA is still awaiting the MA Rule guidance we requested last year, it was promised to be issued about a month ago. Thanks to our AHA and NACUBO partners and the Advocacy Committee, we filed this testimony with the Ways and Means Committee following up on a tax reform hearing. We plan in the future, when/if things heat up, to prepare a statement from a number of health and education groups, as we did in 2015.
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AuthorCharles A. Samuels Archives
December 2019
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