Insights

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, owners and developers find themselves facing the prospect of continued project disruptions. While almost every governmental shutdown order has allowed construction activities to continue as long as safety and health guidelines are followed, COVID-19 cases continue to rise to the highest levels ever seen in various hotspots throughout the country. As a result, owners and developers again face the possibility of project disruption or even project shutdown.

Following the enactment of tax reform legislation in 2017 commonly known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the constitutionality of the “individual mandate” under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) came into question and is one of the issues to be decided in a case now pending before the United States Supreme Court.

The first reported substantive ruling by a judge sitting in Illinois on the legal implications of whether COVID-19 and the resulting governmental shelter-in-place orders relieve a tenant’s obligation to pay rent pursuant to a force majeure provision in a commercial lease agreement was entered by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Donald Cassling on June 3, 2020.

The IRS earlier this month released proposed regulations on Section 1031 like-kind exchanges that may help taxpayers who were facing tax consequences due to changes made to Section 1031 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 related to the tax treatment of personal property involved in the exchange.

In this first episode, our Chief Marketing Officer, John Byrne, interviews Corporate Partner Fred Tannenbaum about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on private equity, as well as what the future holds for investors and fund managers. Click on the play button above to watch!

This week, the SBA released new guidance surrounding the ever-changing Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). As we recently wrote about, on June 5, 2020, borrowers received welcome news, as the PPP Flexibility Act lengthened the amount of time for borrowers to use loan proceeds from 8 to 24 weeks, reduced the amount of the loan required to be tied to payroll from 75% to 60% in order to achieve maximum forgiveness, increased the amount of time an employer must restore FTE count and salaries, and expanded the safe harbor for the same.