Opportunity Zones News

Earlier today, the U.S. Treasury Department released REG-115420-18, Investing in Qualified Opportunity Funds — a 74-page regulatory document that clarifies many ambiguities surrounding the new opportunity zones program created by Trump’s Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, but also raises additional questions. The regulations are still not finalized. There are a few more steps to go through

East Coast law firm Day Pitney recently wrote an article highlighting many of the biggest unanswered questions about Section 1400Z on qualified opportunity zone funds ahead of the release of official regulations from the IRS. For commentary on each of these questions, check out the original article at DayPitney.com. How does a business’s need for

John Pantekidis, CIO and general counsel for multi-family office TwinFocus, recently contributed an article to Forbes explaining why Qualified Opportunity Zone investments could be considered a “once-in-a-lifetime” program for high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and ultra high net worth (UHNW) families. Pantekidis makes several interesting points in his article about unknowns, including: In some cases,

Back in June, the Kresge Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation jointly announced a request for letters of inquiry from fund managers who had plans to establish opportunity funds. Of the 141 responses received, last month the foundations identified 20 potential fund managers that were eligible to receive grants and support. The foundations have committed up

Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin was interviewed by The Hill’s editor-in-chief Bob Cusack during a live event last week. The interview was wide-ranging, but briefly covered the new opportunity zones tax incentive, where Mnuchin expressed his optimism in the program. Mnuchin said: I think there’s going to be over $100 billion of private capital that

While the IRS works on opportunity zone guidance, Bob Ibanez, senior public policy manager at Novogradac & Company, has suggested in a recent article that the Treasury department use the lessons they have learned from the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program. There are several similarities between the opportunity zone benefit and the NMTC, including

The Treasury department has sent its proposed regulations regarding opportunity zones to the Office of Management and Budget for review. As part of the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, the proposed opportunity zones rules are subject to an expedited 10-day review period (usually 45 days) by the OMB. Once approved, Treasury will release its guidelines

Steve Glickman, one of the lead architects of the opportunity zones legislation, has left EIG to start an opportunity zones investment consulting firm. According to their press release, Washington DC-based Develop Advisors “will advise fund managers, investors, project developers, and communities on fund strategy, structure and compliance, investor relations and outreach, pipeline development, and guidance

Opportunity zones and opportunity funds were established by Congress as part of Tax Cuts & Jobs Act that was passed in December 2017. Governors of every state and U.S. territory (and the mayor of Washington DC) nominated their opportunity zones in spring 2018. IRS published the finalized list of designated opportunity zones [PDF] in July. Opportunity

With the enormous tax breaks that opportunity funds offer for investors, it seems like they area a slam dunk investment opportunity. Not so fast, cautions DJ Van Keuren at Forbes. Just because it’s an opportunity fund doesn’t necessarily make it a good investment. Never lose sight of the fundamentals when looking at projects within an