Historic Tax Credit Compromise: Lawmakers Find Common Ground

In the early hours of Friday, May 15, a compromise bill was crafted which struck middle ground between Missouri Senators who had spent months gridlocked over the historic tax credit issue and economic development. Senator Brad Lager (Maryville), who pushed for a cap and other limitations on the historic tax credit, said that the language achieves the necessary budget certainty, which he sought throughout session.

The compromise resulted in the following:

• A per-project residential cap of $1,000,000 in qualified rehabilitation expenditures (QREs) for owner occupied single-family homes;
• A small project exemption for projects with $1.1 million in qualified rehabilitation expenditures  (QREs) (these do not count toward a cap); 
• A $140 million cap on historic tax credits (existing projects do not fall under the cap); and 
• An effective date of January 1, 2010.

Senator Smith (St. Louis) said, “We struck a compromise to protect the historic preservation program for years to come. The  $140M cap is high enough to give lenders confidence that deals will go through. Delaying the effective date for the cap until next year will give many developers the time to line up financing and apply before caps take effect. Most importantly, the exemption I negotiated for smaller projects will ensure that rehabbers go to the front of the tax credit line and will never have to worry about a cap.”

The small project exemption, first proposed by Peter Noonan of Commerce Bank, will allow smaller-scale projects to continue redevelopment without worry about the cap. Based on historical data, around 75 percent of all deals will be unaffected by the cap, toward which their dollars will not count. Jacob Sanders, a Springfield, MO, CPA, said, “the small deal exemption is key. It’s those small developers right now that are having such a hard time. Plus, the large percentage of projects, especially outside of Saint Louis and Kansas City, will fall into that category.”

Missouri Preservation’s Deb Sheals said the new provisions to restrict historic rehabilitation tax credits should have little affect on future redevelopment. “Based upon past use, the $140 million cap, paired with the critical small project exemption, should allow the program to function close to the level it has in the past several years.  In FY08, for example, just over $161 million were issued in historic credits, and of that, a little more than $20 million went to projects that would be covered by the small project exemption,” she said.

Preservationist Michael Allen of Landmarks Association of St. Louis, Inc., expressed relief at the outcome. “The compromise won’t stop the wave of job creation and community development that started when the credit was created in 1998,” he said.


“We set up the language with the development and finance community in mind,” Noonan said. “We want folks to be able to confidently buy the buildings, and then work with their lenders with the surety that the credits will be there for them for the life of the rehabilitation, how ever long that may be. We also fought hard, to some heavy resistance, to allow a safety valve to ultimately get additional credits above the allocation level in the case of cost overruns or increases in project scope.  That is key for this to work effectively.”    

Since its inception in 1998, Missouri’s historic tax credit program has been recognized nationwide as the national model for its ability to generate jobs and spur housing growth across every region of the state. According to the Missouri Department of Economic Development, the historic tax credit program generated nearly 5,000 jobs in fiscal year 2007. Donovan Rypkema, a leading preservation economist, said the program has produced over 40,000 jobs since its inception in 1998.   

Some legislators this year sought to greatly restrict the tax credit program through the economic development bill. Opponents argued for more limitations on the amount of credits issued through the state program, which already uses tighter rules than the federal historic preservation tax credit. Advocates of the historic tax credit emphasized the economic benefit of the program.

Working throughout session for the preservation of the credit were longtime advocates Jerry Schlichter, attorney, and Eric Friedman of Friedman Group Realtors, along with Coalition staffer Anne Suggs. Coalition representatives Peter Noonan of Commerce Bank, lobbyist Jim Farrell of Policy Solutions, and Deb Sheals of Missouri Preservation worked alongside legislators to ensure the session ended with a workable compromise. Husch Blackwell Sanders, LLP provided key legal expertise to draft language capturing the details of the legislation.

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