It has been said that the greenest building is the building that already exists. The federal Historic Tax Credit has been successfully encouraging the rehabilitation and reuse of existing buildings since it was adopted in 1976. The federal Historic Tax Credit program offers two kinds of credits: a 20% tax credit for the rehabilitation of income producing buildings determined by the National Park Service to be "certified historic structures" and a 10% tax credit for the rehabilitation of income producing buildings built prior to 1936. The success of the federal program caused 29 states to adopt similar programs by July 1, 2012. On July 2, 2012, Pennsylvania became the 30th state to offer tax credits to help finance the rehabilitation of historic structures when Governor Corbett signed HB 761 of 2011. That bill created a 25% tax credit against a variety of state taxes. The utility of the Pennsylvania program will be somewhat constrained by the modest limit of $3,000,000 on the amount of credits allocated annually. (A further limitation is that a single project may not receive more than $500,000 in credits.) The Department of Community and Economic Development is presently developing the regulations applicable to the program and expects to announce them by July 1, 2013. Whatever those regulations are, they must implement the statutory requirements that the credits are distributed on a "first come, first served" basis and that they be distributed equitably among various regions in Pennsylvania.
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