Two state agencies to jointly administer state historic tax credit program
KENT DARR Feb 4, 2016 | 4:34 pm
2 min read time
425 wordsAll Latest News, Real Estate and Development
With an application window opening Feb. 15 for what could be a $10 million round of funding for state of Iowa historic tax credits, representatives from two state agencies — the Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs — will meet today to work out an arrangement in which they will oversee the program.
First up are two important goals:
1. Clearing a logjam of projects waiting for funding.
2. Eliminating what one state official said was a false impression that some developers using the credits were attempting to defraud the program.
“There is no fraud in the program,” Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs Director Mary Cownie said. The department has been charged with administering the program and now will share that responsibility with IEDA.
Developers have said that pending projects have been put on hold because of uncertainty about whether they can receive the credits, while others say that in some cases, they have spent millions of dollars on finance fees as they carry loans that were supposed to be paid off after the credits were issued for completed projects.
After a series of meetings with representatives from the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), the Iowa Department of Revenue, the Iowa attorney general’s office and others, some developers have said that they have come away with the sense that they are suspected of defrauding the program.
That is not the case, said Steve King, who directs the DCA’s state historic preservation office.
“We can’t help what people hear, but we have never used the term fraud,” he said. “If there was fraud, we wouldn’t be issuing tax credit certificates, and I have signed enough of them in the last couple of weeks. We are continually refining our process to get the certificates issued.”
At issue were lengthy audits of historic preservation projects by the Iowa Department of Revenue. However, Cownie said the department provided a valuable service to the program by determining the proper methods for filing claims for tax credit certificates.
The controversy has been simmering since the end of May, when new rules were adopted to implement the changes to the state historic tax credit law approved by the 2014 Iowa Legislature.
Continue to reading to learn more about how the two state agencies will work together… Full Insider story >>>
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