Leasing

The Court of Federal Claims on October 28 entered judgment in favor of Alta Wind cash grant applicants awarding them collectively over $206 million for grants under Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act that the Treasury had declined to pay.  The two page judgment is available at Alta Wind Judgment Oct…

Below are soundbites from panel discussions on September 14, 2016 at Solar Power International in Las Vegas.  The soundbites are organized by topic, rather than in chronological order, and were prepared without the benefit of a transcript or a recording.

Supply of Tax Equity Investment

“There are 32 tax equity investors in the renewables market, about 26 of those invest in solar.” — Managing Director from a Money Center Bank

“It is very challenging when syndicators are trying to bring in new investors.  Each new investor takes nine to 15 months to work through its approval issues.” — Director, Renewable Energy Investments for a Commercial Bank

“We continue to see insurance companies get into the market.  They like the asset.  You might have newcomers that invest in 20 MW of projects in commercial transactions.” — Managing Director of a Boutique Financial Advisor

“There are more investors for solar than wind.  Wind is limited to experienced project [financiers].  Overall there is enough tax equity capacity for solar.” — Managing Director of a Boutique Financial Advisor

“We prioritize tax equity investment opportunities based on:

  1. Basic project finance fundamentals – quality of the sponsor and its management team, the quality of the power purchase agreement (“PPA”), the quality of the equipment and its warranties, and pro forma stress tests.
  2. The minimum amount out the door.  For solar, we want to be investing $75 to $100 million per transaction.  If the transaction involves commercial and industrial or residential projects, we like it to take no more than six to nine months to deploy that amount.
  3. Repeat business.  Does the sponsor have a pipeline of projects, so we can reuse the papers we have” negotiated. —  Managing Director from a Money Center Bank

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Continue Reading Solar Power International Panel Discussions Soundbites

New Tax Regulations Curtail Pass-Through Lease Structure Benefit

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently released new proposed and temporary regulations addressing certain investment tax credit issues in a so-called “pass-through lease” structure. A pass-through lease is a structure in which the lessor of an investment tax credit-eligible asset makes an election to pass through the investment tax credit to the lessee of the asset, which lessee is frequently a partnership. The term “inverted lease” is sometimes used to refer to a pass-through lease structure in which each of the lessor and the lessee is a partnership, and the lessor and lessee partnerships are related to each other. The new regulations apply an “aggregate” treatment to partnerships (and S corporations) to ensure that any investment tax credit is appropriately taxable to the taxpayer that used the credit.

As discussed in more detail below, if a partner in a partnership that claimed an investment tax credit transfers its partnership interest during the deemed income period, these new regulations require the remaining income inclusion to be accelerated and to be recognized by the transferor. Further, under these regulations, the deemed income inclusion occurs at the partner level such that it does not result in an increase to the partners’ outside basis.

Although these temporary regulations are primarily directed at the structuring of historic tax credit transactions, the temporary regulations do have a limited effect with respect to solar transactions where the credit is passed through to a partnership (particularly the outside basis adjustment in the case of partnership lessees, as discussed below).
Continue Reading New Tax Regulations Curtail Pass-Through Lease Structure Benefit

We are pleased to make available the materials from our June 29 tax equity seminar.

Here’s is the link to a PDF of the slides: Seminar Slides PDF.

The webinar audience submitted questions that we did not have time to answer.  The questions were:

1.  Why do balance sheet players have an advantage in…

Hannah Hawkins, Attorney-Advisor in the office of Tax Legislative Counsel of the United States Treasury was a panelist at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in New York on June 21 and commented on investment tax credit (“ITC”) related guidance that Treasury is working on.

With respect to the solar version of the “start of construction” guidance for determining tax credit eligibility that parallels what was issued for wind in Notice 2016-31, Ms. Hawkins stated that “it is the next thing on our plate.  We hope to have guidance in the fall [or] winter.”…
Continue Reading Treasury Attorney Discusses Pending ITC Guidance at REFF

On June 29, please join David Burton of Mayer Brown and Gintaras Sadauskas of Alfa Business Advisors for a seminar presented at Mayer Brown’s Chicago office and as a webinar.

Topics addressed in the program will include:

  • The IRS’s updated “start of construction” guidance for tax credit qualification
  • Trends in the tax equity market

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Below is a link to my presentation addressing state tax credits to Tax Executives International’s New Orleans chapter.  The presentation (i) discusses the federal tax treatment of state tax credits, (ii) outlines several transaction structures involving both state tax credits and the federal investment tax credit and (iii) provides an overview of renewable energy state…

First published in State Tax Notes on August 11, 2014

David Burton discusses a recent ruling from the Missouri Department of Revenue that is intended to address the sales tax consequences of a synthetic lease transaction. Burton argues that the DOR misapplied the term ‘‘synthetic lease,’’ leaving taxpayers without reliable guidance.

Click here to read…

This article was first published by Bloomberg BNA Daily Tax Report on February 24, 2014

In Private Letter Ruling 201404007, released Jan. 24, the Internal Revenue Service ruled favorably on a securitization structure to raise nonrecourse financing secured by cars subject to leases with a terminal rental adjustment clause (TRAC) provided for in Section 7701(h).…