As a tax credit manager, you must be aware of households’ composition and how changes in the size of an existing household after the initial tenant income certification may invoke certain LIHTC rules. Generally, changes in family size don’t cause a unit to stop being income-qualified.
Every year site owners submit various IRS tax forms to claim the low-income housing tax credit on their tax return. IRS examiners look at the submitted information along with internal IRS information to determine whether to conduct an audit. If an examiner wants to continue with the audit process, the examiner will send a notice by mail. The letter will include a request for information and list documents to be made available for the audit. The request for information is known as an IDR, which stands for Information Document Request. An IDR is issued on IRS Form 4564.
When managing a tax credit site, you may be confused about what you can and can’t do when it comes to creating a lease for your low-income households. For instance, you may be unsure whether you can give households a one-month lease without putting your site owner’s tax credits at risk. Or you may not know the right language to include in your lease before a household signs it, so you’ll be able to collect the maximum rent from the household or get it to cooperate with your compliance efforts.
The LIHTC program is an indirect federal subsidy used to finance the construction and rehabilitation of low-income affordable rental housing. LIHTC sites receive funding either as new construction or acquisition rehab. A recently published U.S. Government Accountability Office report on LIHTC development costs stated that the median per-unit LIHTC equity investment was about $147,000 for new construction projects (about 67 percent of the total development cost) and $103,000 for rehabilitation projects (about 61 percent of the total development cost).
Keeping each building’s applicable fraction on target is an essential part of a tax credit manager’s job. The applicable fraction is the percentage of a building’s units rented to low-income households. It comes into play when you calculate the building’s qualified basis, which affects whether the owner can claim all its tax credits. The qualified basis is the eligible basis (which rarely changes but can’t go up) times the applicable fraction (which often goes up or down).
It’s smart management practice to keep your household files up-to-date and complete all the time. Because LIHTC projects will be reviewed for compliance by the state and may be audited by the IRS, complete, well-organized files are very important.
When someone agrees to rent or lease an apartment, he signs a lease or rental agreement outlining the terms of the agreement. It’s a legally binding contract between the tenant and the owner that details the rights and responsibilities of each party. Unlike a typical market-rate apartment, a tax credit site or unit participates in the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. This means the provisions of Section 42 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) are applicable to the lease.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 established income averaging as a third minimum set-aside election, and this option happens to be one of the most significant changes to the LIHTC program in recent years. Every tax credit site must meet and maintain a minimum set-aside throughout the 15-year compliance period to qualify for the tax credit program. A minimum set-aside is the federally required minimum level of tax credit units at a site. To meet the set-aside, you must rent a certain percentage of the units in your building or site to qualified low-income households.
When performing the initial certification for a low-income household at your tax credit site, it’s easy to make mistakes. These mistakes can jeopardize the owner’s tax credits if your state housing agency finds them during an audit.
