Peter Schroeder

WASHINGTON — Build America Bond transaction participants are debating whether they need to do more to track BAB prices to avoid running afoul of statutory premium restrictions and jeopardizing the issuer’s subsidy payments or to respond to an Internal Revenue Service compliance check.

WASHINGTON — The mayor of Tucson has urged the Treasury Department to revise its criteria for determining what areas can use recovery zone bond financing, complaining that the current allocation method overlooks his city even though it has one of the highest unemployment rates in Arizona.

The Retama Development Corp. has agreed to pay the Internal Revenue Service an unspecified amount and convert $30.425 million of tax-exempt bonds into taxable debt to ensure $160.3 million of bonds it issued in 1993 and 1997 will remain tax-exempt.

WASHINGTON — State and local governments will save $12.3 billion on the $90 billion of Build America Bonds issued so far compared with traditional tax-exempt debt, the Treasury Department said in a recent report touting the success of the program.

WASHINGTON — Local housing finance agencies have asked the Treasury Department to push back the Dec. 31 deadline for converting short-term taxable bonds to long-term, tax-exempt, fixed-rate bonds under its New Issue Bond Purchase program, warning they will have trouble meeting it.

The accounts at Causey Demgen & Moore Inc. are teaming up with the attorneys at Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC to help charitable organizations meet their post-issuance compliance obligations.

President Obama has announced that he will appoint Michael Mundaca as the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy during the congressional recess, citing “months of Republican obstruction to administration nominees” as the reason for bypassing the Senate.

WASHINGTON — One year after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act fundamentally altered the municipal landscape, market participants are pressing lawmakers to extend and expand its provisions.

WASHINGTON — Legislation that would extend the Build America Bonds program until April 2013 at gradually reduced subsidy rates was approved by a vote of 246 to 178 in the House yesterday.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department Tuesday released interim guidance detailing how issuers, bondholders, and other market participants should “strip” the tax credits from tax-credit bonds and how that information should be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

The City of Industry Urban-Development Agency in California has agreed to pay $500,000 to the federal government to settle alleged tax-law violations and preserve the tax-exempt status of $68.1 million of tax allocation bonds it sold in 2003.

WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department has released a 28-page notice describing forthcoming rules on how muni market participants can “strip” tax credits from tax-credit bonds and sell them separately.

WASHINGTON — President Obama Thursday signed a $17.6 billion jobs bill that enables municipal issuers to receive direct, Build America Bond-style payments from four types of tax-credit bonds.

WASHINGTON — In a turnaround over a controversial test, the Internal Revenue Service has withdrawn seven notices that had threatened the tax-exempt status of 12 solid-waste bond issues sold for Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific LLC over a nine-year period.

WASHINGTON — The Build America Bonds program would be extended for three years, but the direct-pay subsidy rate would shrink from the current 35% of interest costs to 33% in 2011, 31% in 2012 and 30% in 2013, under a draft of a second jobs bill unveiled yesterday by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich.

WASHINGTON — The Build America Bond program would be extended for three years — but the current 35% subsidy rate would gradually shrink to 33% in 2011, 31% in 2012 and 30% in 2013 — under a discussion draft of jobs legislation unveiled today by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service is seeking public comments on two matters related to private-activity bonds: final regulations for those issued to finance power facilities and the form issuers must file to elect a carryforward of unused volume cap.

WASHINGTON — A new jobs bill expected to be introduced today by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., will include an 18-month extension of the Build America Bonds program, a committee spokesperson said.

WASHINGTON — The top Republican tax-writer in the Senate yesterday warned colleagues that provisions in the House-passed jobs bill that offer high subsidy rates for Build America Bond-type programs would allow Wall Street banks to pocket more in underwriting fees.

The Senate yesterday approved a legislative package that would extend bond-related and other expiring tax provisions, while market participants pushed key members of Congress to make permanent two stimulus provisions that give banks more incentive to buy tax-exempt debt.