Historic Tax Credit
For more than 40 years, the federal Historic Tax Credit (HTC) has transformed vacant schools, mills, warehouses, theaters, churches, and Main Street buildings into housing, businesses, cultural spaces, and community anchors.
The results speak for themselves:
- 51,000+ historic buildings preserved
- $257+ billion in private investment leveraged
- Over 3.4 million jobs created
- Hundreds of thousands of housing units created or rehabilitated
- Generates more in revenue than the cost of the program
What We’re Fighting For
The HTC has not kept pace with other federal incentives and needs to be modernized. Over the past decade, HTCs have lost 25% of their investment value due to unfavorable IRS rulings, administrative burdens, and changes in the credit structure. Through direct lobbying, coalition-building, grassroots mobilization, and congressional advocacy, we work to ensure the Historic Tax Credit remains a powerful tool for community revitalization.
What Wo Do
- Build bipartisan congressional support for Historic Tax Credit legislation
- Mobilize advocates nationwide to educate and engage with elected officials
- Protect the credit from harmful tax policy changes
- Advocate for improvements to modernize the credit and make it more accessible and easier use
- Elevate the role preservation plays in housing, sustainability, economic development, and Main Street revitalization
As communities face rising construction costs, vacant downtown buildings, and housing shortages, the Historic Tax Credit helps bridge those gaps – but only if strong advocates continue fighting for it.
What You Can Do
- Invite your members of Congress to visit a HTC project to see first-hand the transformative effect the HTC has on local communities. Check out the Arranging a Congressional Site Visit Guide here.
- Urge your members of Congress to co-sponsor the bipartisan Historic Tax Credit Growth and Opportunity Act (H.R. 2941, S. 1459) and include HTC provisions in moving tax legislation. Read our Historic Tax Credit Issue Brief here.
Help Us Keep Preservation Moving Forward
When you donate to Preservation Action, you help protect the policies that make preservation possible.
Background
The HTC is a development tool for rehabilitating historic buildings, promoting small business opportunities, housing creation, and well-paying construction jobs. The credit is claimed against income taxes & equals 20% of qualified rehabilitation expenditures for certified historic properties. The HTC provides essential gap financing for buildings in urban, suburban, and rural areas and is a true catalyst to revitalize vibrant, people-centric communities. Roughly half of all HTC projects certified each year have development costs of less than $1 million, ensuring private investment small towns and rural communities.
Challenges that negatively affect the programs success:
- The HTC looks largely as it did in 1986, and is cumbersome for property owners to pair with other incentives like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.
- HTCs have lost 25% of their investment value over the last 10 years, resulting in a decrease in project applications received by NPS each year.
- Investors claiming the HTC over 5 years (vs. 1), adverse impacts of IRS guidance on HTC deal structures, and the high cost of materials and labor, have led to a decrease in value.
Proposed changes to the HTC included in the HTC-GO Act would help restore value, improve access to the credit, make more projects eligible, and boost the credit for smaller and rural rehabilitation projects.
Additional Resources