Trump Tax Changes Could Significantly Impact CRE

Article originally posted on Globe St. on November 15, 2024

A new Trump administration, with Republicans in charge of both chambers of Congress, likely means significant changes in various areas of law that could affect commercial real estate. One area is taxes, especially around extending deadlines—or making permanent—areas of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

A popular one, according to Mitchell Snow, partner at Adler & Stachenfeld and co-chair of the firm’s tax practice, is making the “20% reduction for certain pass-through business income under Code Section 199A” permanent. “This reduction generally applies to real estate investments,” he told GlobeSt.com. Potentially, that is something with a natural appeal to him.

Another natural draw is reducing the capital gains tax by 20%. Lessening the tax could be of great benefit to CRE investors, opening additional profit by reducing the regulatory expense. However, Snow notes that Trump “did not mention the capital gains as often as some of the others.” That may mean his focus is on other things or that it’s more assumed. “I wonder if there’s as much of a push for lower capital gains” with valuations and property sales down.

Then, there is a reduction in corporate income tax rate from 21% to 15% for manufacturing companies in the US and 20% for all other corporations. This is a more complex issue. Assuming increased tariffs don’t offset the benefit, setting up companies for more profitable manufacturing would benefit industrial CRE as onshoring and increased need for warehousing would drive demand for properties. However, there were questions during 2017 about the value of how low corporate tax rates should be. Will that matter to CRE? It seems unlikely that the additional profits after a single percentage point decrease in the nominal tax rate would be pushed into more CRE investment. As the national corporate income tax averages around 16% to 17%, a cut on the top rate might not make a significant practical difference.

Making the estate tax reductions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would be attractive for estate and tax planning. So would the permanent status of the individual income tax slashes of the Act, with a top tax rate of 37%, although there is some concern that such provisions could be inflationary.

Finally, there is the potential to remove the $10,000 limit on the SALT, or state and local, tax deduction. But it brings up some awkwardness. “When Trump enacted that, it was sort of a punishment to the blue states,” Snow says. “Doing away with that is something New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California would be thrilled at.” It might be used as a negotiation point. “It would be tough for [Trump] to say something was wrong [with the cap] when he was the one who came up with it.”

However, even with Republican control of the Senate, House, and White House, none of this is easy or guaranteed. Some sources with expertise in government have told GlobeSt.com recently that tax policy is one of the most challenging areas of legislation. Unless the upcoming GOP Senate majority abolishes the filibuster — something very popular with most senators as it gives them significant power — none of these actions would be possible if Democrats disagreed because Republicans won’t have 60 members to manage a cloture vote to bring debate to an end. That would leave using a reconciliation bill, which is tricky, as it prohibits an increase of the deficit over ten years, and puts strict limits on the number of such bills that can be passed in a year.