On Dec. 6, 2019 the final Treasury Regulations for the Qualified Opportunity Zone (“QOZ”) tax incentives were submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) for final review. This comes after two rounds of proposed regulations that were released in October 2018 and April 2019, respectively. Please see our previous coverage of the proposed QOZ regulations.
The final regulations were originally expected to be released before the end of the calendar year as part of a regulation package that is expected to be over 550 pages. Recently, OMB review for regulations that were part of tax reform (as the QOZ rules are) were scheduled to be completed in 10 days or less, with the normal review process being 45 days. Previous statements from the IRS have noted that the final QOZ regulations will aim to combine the two sets of proposed regulations, as well as add clarity to open issues and select questions that have been raised through the public comment process.
Taxpayers anxiously await the release of the final regulations, and hope to receive timely additional guidance they need to move forward with efforts to take advantage of the QOZ incentives.
