Holley & Pearson-Farrer has extensive experience advising clients on conceptualizing and executing complex financings involving tax credits. Our attorneys draw upon their broad experience in corporate, finance, real estate, and tax-exempt organizations law to assist our clients in structuring transactions with tax credits to provide additional funds to their projects’ capital stacks.
We have a depth of experience with use of state and federal low-income housing tax credits and historic tax credits to facilitate equity financing for affordable housing.
For example, our firm represented a major hotel developer who sought to amend Georgia law regarding the value of state historic rehabilitation tax credits for commercial projects. Our attorneys drafted legislation, worked with the state’s legislative counsel to revise drafts, testified before the Georgia State House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, and ultimately assisted the client in its successful effort to increase the state historic tax credit from $300,000 to $5 million. The developer then closed on more than $200 million in financing that included equity derived from state and federal historic tax credits, state employment tax credits, owner contributions, conventional debt, and a taxable revenue bond for the parking structure, a transaction for which our firm served as disclosure counsel to the issuer. The project enabled the conversion of a massive, abandoned power plant on the Savannah River into a hotel, entertainment, dining, and retail venue that created more than 500 jobs in a distressed community.
Our tax credit experience also includes two decades of providing counsel regarding financing transactions incorporating federal new markets tax credits (NMTCs). NMTCs incentivize investment in low-income communities. Under the NMTC program, the U.S. Department of the Treasury competitively allocates NMTC authority to intermediaries which choose investment projects, and investors receive a credit against their federal income tax obligations.
We frequently are called upon to serve as counsel to bank lenders and community development entities (CDEs), which provide investment capital for low-income communities and persons by lending money to qualified low-income community businesses (QALICBs). Through our NMTC work, we have assisted in financing vital projects such as the construction and operation of multiple community food banks, the building of a processing and packaging facility for sustainable, organic produce, and the development of an advanced surgical center in low-income, underserved areas characterized by economic distress and inadequate access to capital.
Please reach out to us through the online contact page to discuss how we can assist with your public finance and tax legal needs. Holley & Pearson-Farrer LLP is based in Chicago, with additional offices in Atlanta, New York, and Savannah, Georgia.
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