TY  - JOUR
AU  - Desai, Mihir A
AU  - Dharmapala, Dhammika
AU  - Singhal, Monica
TI  - Tax Incentives for Affordable Housing: The Low Income Housing Tax Credit
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14149
PY  - 2008
Y2  - June 2008
DO  - 10.3386/w14149
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14149
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14149.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Mihir A. Desai
Graduate School of Business Administration
Harvard University
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Tel: 617/495-6693
Fax: 617/496-6592
E-Mail: mdesai@hbs.edu

Dhammika Dharmapala
University of Illinois College of Law
504 E. Pennsylvania Avenue
Champaign, IL 61820
E-Mail: dharmap@illinois.edu

Monica Singhal
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
Tel: 530/754-1545
E-Mail: msinghal@ucdavis.edu
M1  - published as Mihir Desai, Dhammika Dharmapala, Monica Singhal. "Tax Incentives for Affordable Housing: The Low Income Housing Tax Credit," in Jeffrey R. Brown, editor, "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 24" The University of Chicago Press (2010)

M3  - presented at "Economics of Tax Expenditures Conference", March 27-29, 2008
AB  - The Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) represents a novel tax expenditure program that employs "investable" tax credits to spur production of low-income rental housing. While it has grown into the largest source of new affordable housing in the U.S. and its structure is now being replicated in other programs, the LIHTC has also drawn skepticism and calls for its repeal. We provide estimates of tax expenditures under this program and discuss pricing, efficiency, and distributional effects of the program. We also consider the impacts of the recent financial crisis on the LIHTC program and explore implications of resulting policy changes and proposals.
ER  -