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Jeffrey G. Davis

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Jeffrey G. Davis is a partner in the Tax Transactions & Consulting group in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC office and is a co-head of the firm’s Renewable Energy group. Jeff represents major corporations, financial institutions and private equity funds on a wide range of US federal income tax matters. His practice focuses on partnership tax, tax credits and other incentives, and project finance and development. 

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In a recent case, the Tax Court ruled in the taxpayer’s favor as to three California distributed generation solar projects’ eligibility for the energy credit under Section 48 and bonus depreciation under Section 168.  However, the Tax Court did reduce the taxpayer’s basis in the projects, and the taxpayer in the case enjoyed significant procedural advantages due to mistakes by the IRS.

In Golan v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2018-76 (June 5, 2018), in late 2010 a solar contractor installed solar equipment on the roofs of three host properties and entered into power purchase agreements (“PPAs”) with the property owners.  The PPAs provided that the hosts would purchase electricity generated by the solar equipment at a discount to utility rates, while the solar contractor would retain the ownership of the equipment, including the right to any tax or other financial benefits, and would service and repair the equipment.

Mr. Golan, the taxpayer, in 2011 purchased the solar equipment, subject to the PPAs, from the solar contractor for a purported purchase price of $300,000, which was the sum of a purported $90,000 down payment, a $57,750 credit for certain rebates, and a $152,250 promissory note (which the taxpayer was the obligor under but the taxpayer also provided a personal guarantee thereof).  The solar projects were not connected to the grid until after the taxpayer acquired them in 2011.  The IRS unsuccessfully sought to disallow the taxpayer from taking energy credit and depreciation deduction with respect to the solar equipment.…
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Pratt’s Energy Law Report has published our article 2018 and Onward: The Impact of Tax Reform on the Renewable Energy Market. We are pleased to be able to make a PDF version of the article available.  (The article starts on page 6 of the PDF).

A Word About Wind has published our article What Is the Impact of Tax Reform on US Wind Tax Equity Deals? in its blog (subscription required) and newsletter.  If you are unable to open the blog post, the text of the article is available below:

On 22 December 2017, President Trump signed the first major reform of the United States tax code since 1986. Here are some of the ramifications of the reforms on wind tax equity transactions.

Corporate Tax Rate Reduced to 21%

In 2018, the corporate tax rate has been reduced from 35% to 21%. The rate reduction means that US corporations will pay significantly less federal income tax, so the supply of tax equity will decline. However, most tax equity investors are expected to still pay enough tax to merit making tax equity investments.

Importantly, the rate reduction means sponsors of wind projects will be able to raise less tax equity as depreciation deductions are worth only $.21 per dollar of deduction rather than $.35 per dollar.

100% Bonus Depreciation

A partial mitigant to tax rate reduction is that the act provides the option of claiming 100% bonus depreciation (i.e. expensing), so depreciation deductions can be available in the first year (rather than over multiple years). However, the partnership tax accounting rules hamper the efficient use of 100% bonus depreciation.…
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Today, the House voted 227 to 303 in favor of the tax reform bill agreed to by the conference committee.  No Democrats voted for the House bill, and 12 Republicans from high tax states voted against it.  The Senate is expected to vote later this evening to approve it; it is possible that the president could sign the bill as early as tomorrow.

The enacted legislation is expected to be identical to the bill approved by the conference committee.  Our analysis of the conference committee’s bill’s impact on the renewable energy market is below, which is followed by a chart that summarizes the relevant provisions in each of the three bills.…
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The US tax reform bill that the Senate passed on December 2, 2017—along partisan lines in a 51 to 49 vote—is a mixed bag for the tax equity market. The bill is now headed to the conference committee, consisting of House of Representative and Senate leaders, to be reconciled with the tax reform bill passed by the House on November 16.

Below we describe the five differences from the House bill that are of greatest significance to the renewable energy tax equity market. (See also our prior analysis of the ramifications for the tax equity market of the House bill.)

Amounts of and Eligibility for Tax Credits

First, the amount of renewable energy tax credits available and the rules for qualifying for those credits are unchanged from current law under the Senate bill. Specifically, the inflation adjustment that applies to production tax credits is left in place and the “start of construction” rules are unchanged. The fact that the Senate bill left these provision alone is positive for wind and solar, which are in the midst of a phase-out, for wind, and a phase-down, for solar.

However, the Senate bill also left alone the lapsed tax credits for the “orphaned” renewable energy technologies that were inadvertently omitted from the 2015 extension that benefited wind and solar. The orphaned renewable energy technologies are fuel cells, geothermal, biomass, combined heat and power, landfill gas, small wind, solar illumination, tidal power and incremental hydroelectric.

Proponents of those technologies may have more negative views of the Senate bill. There is still discussion of the tax credits for the orphaned technologies being included in an “extenders bill” to possibly be taken up after the tax reform process is over.…
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Our article Proposed GOP Tax Reform Would Curtail Tax Incentives for Wind and Solar is available from North American WindPower (no subscription required).  The article includes a discussion of the politics of the Senate passing tax reform and a discussion of market implications; however, the discussion of the specific changes to the Internal Revenue Code…

On Thursday, November 2, Republicans in the US House of Representatives released their proposed tax reform legislation, providing for massive alterations to tax law. The proposed legislation would trim tax benefits applicable to the wind and solar industries, while broadening the scope of the application of the “orphaned” energy tax credit. Further, it would eliminate the tax credit for electric vehicles starting in 2018. The proposed legislation is subject to further amendments and may not be enacted into final legislation.

Continuity of Construction. Pursuant to current law, the production tax credit (PTC) and investment tax credit (ITC) phase out over time, with the level of credit for which a renewable energy project qualifies being based on when the project began construction relative to various deadlines that determine the level of PTC or ITC. Under the proposed legislation, for any renewable energy project to qualify for a specific level of PTC or ITC, there would need to be continuous construction on such project from the deadline for the specific PTC or ITC level through the date the project is placed in service.

The concept of continuous construction does not exist in the current PTC and ITC provisions of the Tax Code. It was adopted by the IRS as an administrative matter in Notice 2013-29. However, the IRS later, under Notice 2016-31, created a safe harbor to enable projects to avoid application of the IRS’s “continuity” requirement. To qualify for the safe harbor, a project must be placed in service within four calendar years after the end of the calendar year in which construction began. The proposed legislation would effectively codify the continuity requirement and eliminate the safe harbor. Further, these changes appear to apply to all projects that have not been placed in service as of the date of enactment of the proposed legislation, regardless of whether construction of such projects began before enactment.…
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The full text of the article is below or it is available at Solar Industry Magazine:

The solar industry has undergone a tremendous evolution in the course of the last decade. Below we outline some of the more notable developments, with a focus on project financing in the U.S.

In 2007, the largest solar photovoltaic project in the world was an 11 MW project in Portugal, called Serpa, that cost EUR 58 million to build. Today, the largest solar PV project in the world is Tengger Desert Solar Park in China and is 1,500 MW, or more than 100 times the capacity of Serpa, and the cost of building a solar project is a fraction of what it was a decade ago.

In 2007, manufacturers of thin-film solar and manufacturers of crystalline silicon solar were battling to see which would be the predominant technology. Today, there are more manufacturers of crystalline modules than thin film and more projects using crystalline modules than thin film; however, First Solar appears to have found success with rigid thin-film modules.

In 2007, terms like “resi,” “C&I,” “DG” and “community solar,” which are now ubiquitous in our industry, were unknown to most energy financiers.…
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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a federally-owned laboratory that is funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, recently released a report titled Wind Energy Finance in the United States: Current Practice and Opportunities. The report provides a thorough overview of the capital sources and financing structures commonly used in wind energy finance. Below are quotes from the report that are of particular interest to tax equity market participants. We applaud the authors for writing a comprehensive report on a topic that is extremely technical.  Also, below we include comments clarifying certain tax or legal concepts referenced in particular quotes.

Wind Expansion in 2016

• By the end of 2016, cumulative U.S. wind generation capacity stood at 82.2 gigawatts (GW), expanding by 8.7 GW from 2015 installations levels. Wind energy added the most utility-scale electricity generation capacity to the U.S. grid in 2015 and the second most in 2016. Project investment in wind in the United States has averaged $13.6 billion annually since 2006 with a cumulative investment total of $149 billion over this time period. The investment activity demonstrates the persistent appeal of wind energy and its significant role in the overall market for electricity generation in the United States.

Future Outlook

• Looking ahead, the near-term outlook for wind energy reported previously suggests a continued need for capital availability at levels consistent with deployment seen in 2015 and 2016. The market has shown the capacity to finance projects at this level using current mechanisms at economically viable rates; however, increased deployment could necessitate new sources of capital. Broad changes to the financial industry—such as the possibility of major corporate tax reform, the currently scheduled phase out of the PTC and ITC for wind, and, specifically, a change in the role of tax equity—could fundamentally reshape the predominant mechanism for wind energy investment. It is possible that financing practices may need to evolve, while the growing body of wind energy deployment and operational experiences could help to attract new market participants.

PTC and Accelerated Tax Depreciation

• The United States Federal Government incentivizes renewable energy projects principally through the tax code. As of this writing, wind technologies are eligible to receive either the production tax credit (PTC) or the investment tax credit (ITC) (one or the other, but not both) as well as accelerated depreciation tax offsets through the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS).

The PTC

• The tax credit incentives (the PTC and ITC) provide an after-tax credit on tax liabilities (i.e., the taxes paid) and thus are often described as dollar-for-dollar tax incentives. As of this writing the PTC is currently worth $0.024 for every kWh generated over a 10-year period while the ITC is structured as a one-time credit valued at 30% of eligible system costs. For projects to claim the aforementioned full PTC or ITC values, however, the project is required to have begun construction prior to December 31, 2016. Projects that begin construction in 2017 through 2019 are available for a reduced-value PTC or ITC.…
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Below is the text of an article we published in Law360 on September 14.  (The article is also available at Law360.)

On September 7, the Internal Revenue Service issued Revenue Procedure 2017-47 to provide a safe harbor for public utilities that inadvertently or unintentionally use a practice or procedure that is inconsistent with the so-called normalization rules. Before describing the revenue procedure, we first discuss the basics of normalization.

Normalization is an accounting system provided for by Treasury regulations that is used by regulated public utilities to reconcile the tax treatment of the investment tax credits (ITC) set forth in section 46 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 or accelerated depreciation of public utility assets under section 168 of the Code with their regulatory treatment.

Although the ITC generally was repealed with respect to “public utility property” (i.e., property that earns a regulated return set by a public utility commission (PUC) (which has different names in different states)) that was placed in service after 1985, normalization remains relevant with respect to the ITC due to the long economic useful lives of much public utility property. Thus, Revenue Procedure 2017-47 addresses the ITC, not because solar projects (or other renewable projects) that earn a regulated return would currently qualify for the ITC, but because public utility property up until 1985 qualified for the ITC and some of that property is still being used and included in utility rate-making calculations as described below.

Understanding normalization requires an understanding of certain fundamentals of rate-making for regulated utilities. As a general matter, a regulated utility is entitled to earn an after-tax return on its investments in its utility system. The PUC that regulates the utility then sets the rates paid by customers for the utility service (e.g., electricity) to allow the utility to earn that after-tax return on its investments. In setting those rates, the PUC must determine economic depreciation for the utility’s assets and “tax expense.”…
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