Cosenza: In the Administration's thinking, they're trying to find more taxes in any way they can with the thought that they could reduce corporate taxes. But first, let's review why these rules were put into place. Back in 1921 when it was enacted, there were two major reasons. Number one: to encourage active reinvestments from people. The second one was to avoid unfair taxation of ongoing investments in properties. That enactment established clear rules to guide complicated transactions with multiple people and assets for a non-simultaneous closing. The old rule used to be that in five years you could tax-exchange your property in 60 months. But 15 or 25 years ago they had to designate it 45 days that you had to close it. The primary purpose was to allow taxpayers to keep investing without being taxed on theoretical gains or losses.

If there is a continuation of a person's original investment, who puts $2 million into a shopping center, and you want to go into another shopping center, there is a continual advancement of the original investment. This is what Congress wanted to happen, because it will stimulate the economy by people rolling money into different deals. Taxing may get more money into the government's coffers, but it is contradictory to the economic stimulus and growth that the economy needs right now. The gross domestic product will literally fall.

GlobeSt.com: How does this impact retail REITs and how they do their business?

Cosenza: Lets say a REIT owns a shopping center they bought for $20 million and it's now worth $30 million. The REIT is going to want to sell it possibly because it has reached its peak and is never going to be any better. There is not a lot of growth left, and they have done the best they can with that piece of real estate. If they sold it and had to pay the taxes without being able to like-kind exchange, they have to distribute the profits to the stockholders. That shopping center they bought for $20 million and held for years, probably depreciated to under $10 million. So now the little guy who's got that stock needs to pay the tax, not on the $10 million, but on over $20 million from the basis all the way to the sales price. In that instance, you would have virtually no money left over. Why would you sell it?

But if you can continue on doing like-kind exchanges, you can take that $30 million you're going to get by selling that center, and then taking that money and buying a $40-million center or a $50-million center. Then what are you going to do to that asset? You're going to do the asphalt. You're going to re-stripe the parking lot. You're going repaint the exterior. You might even knock down part of it and put a new tenant in. All of these jobs get created.

GlobeSt.com: What are your thoughts on interest rates and if retail real estate investors are worried about them?

Cosenza: Are people worried about interest rates? Yes. Should they be worried? A little bit, but not much. Should they be worried about inflation? A little bit but not much. The economy is creeping along and doing pretty well.

But if they enacted this bill, you would see something like 1986 when they changed the tax laws and the savings and loan industry went into the tank and all of the commercial real estate across the United States sank in value. It would shut the engine down that we created in the 1920s to increase the value and velocity of money going through the economy and helps everyone all along the way.