Extra $11B of Capacity Going to U.S. Territories as Well as States

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The $11 billion of additional private-activity bond capacity that Congress approved for housing in recently enacted legislation will be divided among U.S. territories as well as states and will therefore increase each of their PAB caps by 37.9% by the end of the calendar year.

An earlier story published by The Bond Buyer that had said state caps would increase by 38.6% did not take into account the U.S. territories - Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.

The Bond Buyer's annual story on states' use of private-activity bonds also has not included the U.S. territories because the U.S. Census Bureau does not publish annual population estimates for the territories, other than Puerto Rico.

Under the tax law, the annual PAB caps are calculated based on a state's population. For 2008 the PAB caps were set at $85 per capita, except for small states for which the cap was set at $262.095 million.

Under the tax law, for U.S. territories that are the least populated - all of the territories except Puerto Rico - the annual caps are calculated according to a formula: the quotient of the population of the territory divided by the population of the state with the least population multiplied by the population of the territory.

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