Last week at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development (Forum), Michael Novey, Associate Tax Legislative Counsel, Office of Tax Policy, U.S. Department of the Treasury, encouraged the Tax Credit Equity and Financing Committee of the Forum to consider submitting a request to the IRS for priority guidance on issues relating to the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC). Based on discussions at the annual meeting, the Committee submitted its top five issues yesterday, which can be found here.  Not only does the request provide background on the issues, it also describes why it is important for guidance to be provided now.

Each year the public is invited to submit recommendations to the IRS about what guidance would be helpful for the IRS to provide. This year’s notice from the IRS can be found here.  In past guidance plans, various LIHTC topics have been included, such as the right of first refusal under tax code Section 42(i)(7) and the federally or state assisted exception to the 10-year acquisition credit rule under tax code Section 42(d)(6).  Since the IRS has not yet provided formal guidance on these two important topics, they are among the issues included in the Committee’s request.

We will keep you posted if/when the IRS responds to these issues.