Tax, Spending Package Signed; MBA Releases Statement on Final Version
MBA’s President and CEO Bob Broeksmit, CMB, commented on House passage of the Republican-led tax and spending package. President Trump signed the legislation into law on July 4.
“MBA is pleased that the final tax package preserves or strengthens – and makes permanent – numerous pro-housing and pro-economic growth tax provisions that were identified by our Board-level Tax Task Force, led by 2025 Chair-Elect Christine Chandler and Vice Chair Owen Lee. We believe these provisions will benefit homeowners and renters, increase housing production, and improve the financial outcomes of our single-family and commercial/multifamily members’ businesses.
“We thank the Trump administration and House and Senate leaders for focusing on these housing and real estate matters during this legislative process and look forward to President Donald Trump signing the bill into law.”
The package preserves–or in some cases enhances–key elements of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Relevant MBA-supported tax policy elements include:
• Making permanent the 2017 individual rate structure and increased standard deduction.
• Maintaining and making permanent the 20% deduction in current law for Qualified Business Income under Section 199A–and expanding the deduction limit’s “phase-in” range.
• Allowing 100% bonus depreciation for certain qualifying properties and restoring/making permanent full expensing for new capital investments.
• Temporarily raising the current state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap to $40,000, with a $500,000 income cap that grows annually by 1% until it “snaps back” after five years.
• Permanently capping eligible mortgage acquisition debt interest deductibility (HELOCs eligible) at $750,000.
• Reinstating and making permanent the deductibility of mortgage insurance premiums (subject to AGI limitations).
• Making durable enhancements to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, e.g., providing a permanent 12% increase in 9% credit authority, while permanently lowering the bond financing test from 50 to 25%.
• Making a renewing set of rounds of the Opportunity Zones (OZ) program permanent–with needed reporting/programmatic tweaks.
• Permanently reinstating EBITDA for the calculation of business interest deductibility.
• Not altering the deferred tax treatment of MSRs, nor the tax code’s current “gain on sale” provision, Section 1031 Like Kind Exchange rules, carried interest provision, or capital gains rate.
• Additionally, as a result of advocacy from MBA and other industry stakeholders both the Section 899 proposal–and the provision restricting a passthrough entity’s ability to deduct state and local tax expenses–were removed from the final Senate legislation.
