TICA Moves To Keep Threat At Bay

Michelle Napoli is editor of TIC Monthly, from which this article is excerpted.

Las Vegas— Political outreach on Capitol Hill is a key focus for the Tenant-in-Common Association, a fact made clear at the association’s annual conference in Las Vegas last month. Being proactive in Washington, DC–where TICA’s next symposium will be held in March–is what the association is aiming to do to avoid another threat to the industry like the one it saw this past spring in the Senate Finance Committee. Professional lobbying representation and advice, a new TICA Political Action Committee, grassroots lobbying efforts and a tax code legislative proposal of its own are the chief avenues it plans to pursue.

Advised by its counsel and its advocacy firm, the Washington Council of Ernst & Young, TICA’s board has devised a proposed legislative change in tax reporting requirements for TICs. The thinking behind proposing such a legislative change, according to a TICA alert sent to association members about a week after the conference, is “to respond to concerns that have been articulated as possible rationales for limiting the application of section 1031 to TIC arrangements and the general concern of legislators and tax administrators that there is a tax gap representing the excess of taxes legitimately owed over the amount of taxes which are being paid by taxpayers.”