Many CRE property owners facing problems with their loans might look for a workout with a lender. Regulators have been promoting the move, as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; the Treasury; Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; and National Credit Union Administration in July published the final revised version of a 2009 policy addressing commercial real estate loan accommodations and workouts.

It wasn't everything and anything goes, but it offered heavy encouragement for banks, at least, to work out a loan before it would go bad. Lenders have their own separate reasons for doing workouts when possible, as it can avoid the need to take back property and to take a hit on a balance sheet.

But where there's a workout, there's a way to go in paying taxes. The IRS explains in Publication 4681 that "debt that is canceled, forgiven, or discharged for less than the full amount of the debt as 'canceled debt'" and typically "treated for income tax purposes as having income." The Tax People will have their due.