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New Market Tax Credits

Program History

The NMTC was authorized in the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000 (PL 106-554) as part of a bi-partisan effort to stimulate investment and economic growth in low income urban neighborhoods and rural communities that lack access to the patient capital needed to support and grow businesses, create jobs, and sustain healthy local economies.

The NMTC program attracts capital to low income communities by providing private investors with a federal tax credit for investments made in businesses or economic development projects located in some of the most distressed communities in the nation – census tracts where the individual poverty rate is at least 20 percent or where median family income does not exceed 80 percent of the area median.  Please click here for a map of eligible census districts.

A NMTC investor receives a tax credit equal to 39 percent of the total Qualified Equity Investment (QEI) made in a Community Development Entity (CDE) and the Credit is realized over a seven-year period, 5 percent annually for the first three years and 6 percent in years four through seven. If an investor redeems a NMTC investment before the seven-year term has run its course, all Credits taken to date will be recaptured with interest.

Impact of New Market Tax Credit Investments

  • Between 2003 and 2015, $679.9 million in NMTC allocation leveraged an additional $619.4 million from other sources for a total of $1.3 billion in project investments to 64 Virginia businesses and revitalization efforts, creating 14,305 jobs.
  • By law, all NMTC investments must be made in economically distressed communities. However, more than 72 percent of all NMTC investments have been in communities exhibiting severe economic distress, including unemployment rates more than 1.5 times the national average, a poverty rate of 30 percent or more, or a median income at or below 60 percent of the area median.

For more information on the New Market Tax Credit program, please visit the website www.nmtccoalition.org.