We can all agree that the year 2020 has been incredibly polarizing.  Never have the authors of this blog fought with family members over politics, what to do or not do during the COVID-19 outbreak, and who should or should not be invited to Christmas Eve dinner more than we have this year.  However, one thing that all Public Finance professionals can agree on is that this country’s infrastructure plan is vital to our industry.…

Remember earlier this year when the novelty of working from home hadn’t worn off, when every day wasn’t Groundhog Day, when we hadn’t run out of Netflix to watch, and when we were all concerned about how to satisfy the in-person TEFRA hearing requirement for tax-exempt private activity bonds in the midst of a pandemic and all sorts of Stay-at-Home orders?  I know, that seems like decades ago! As a refresher, on Star…

It’s fall, and that means two things.  Pumpkin spice everything, and a calendar that’s replete with holidays – Sukkot, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Sweetest Day[1] to name but a few.  Diligent readers of The Public Finance Tax Blog will remember that we previously posted an exhaustive analysis of the “hold-the-offering-price-method” of establishing the issue price of tax-exempt bonds (the “HTOP Method”).  These same readers no doubt remember Treasury regulation § 1.148-1(f)(2)(ii)(B), which requires that the…

In Part 1, we introduced the cash flow relief technique/staple of your morning commute known as “Scoop and Chuck.” In particular, we discussed an issuer that will issue new bonds and use the proceeds to pay interest (but no principal) on a prior issue of bonds.  The new bonds will have a debt service schedule that is pushed out later in time compared to the debt service schedule on the prior bonds. This enables…

The pandemic is forcing even the most frugal issuers to seek to reduce or postpone their debt repayment requirements. There are many ways to do this. Each approach has pros and cons from a business perspective. Not surprisingly, each approach also has tax consequences that are often not intuitive and sometimes downright devilish. We will tackle them one at a time in a series of bite-size (relatively speaking) posts. First up: It’s America’s #1 Morning…

Please join Squire Patton Boggs on Friday, May 8, at 12 pm Eastern time for a one-hour webinar covering the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility,  the CARES Act, and Chapter 9. Click here to register. The webinar will be led by our colleagues Karol Denniston, Alethia Nancoo, and David Stewart (former Majority Staff Director for the House Committee on Ways and Means). The Federal Reserve has agreed to purchase up to US$500 billion…

As described in our previous post, NABL hasn’t been binge watching Tiger King and binge eating like the rest of us during this time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Instead, on March 25, 2020, NABL asked the IRS to adopt a proposed notice  that would address two municipal bond concerns caused by the pandemic: (1) the requirement of in-person TEFRA hearings for tax-exempt private activity bonds; and (2) the extinguishment of qualified…