PORTLAND, Maine — The rural development investor CEI Capital Management was granted $55 million in federal tax credits, which it may allocate to certain projects in rural or low-income communities across the country.
The award from the U.S. Department of Treasury, which allocated $3.5 billion in the latest round, is the last currently authorized by Congress for the federal New Markets Tax Credit program.
CEI, a subsidiary of the Wiscasset-based Coastal Enterprises Inc., said it has funded 88 projects using the funds since 2004. At the end of 2014, about 20 of those projects were in Maine, according to Mainebiz.
The credits allow an investor to collect a total 39 percent of the original investment value in tax credits in installments over seven years.
The federal program expired in December 2014, getting a one-year extension in Congress and a bill to expand the state-level version of the New Markets program cleared a legislative committee in Maine during this session.
In Maine, the program came under scrutiny from lawmakers after the Portland Press Herald detailed how investors who lobbied for the state-level new markets program used loans they got back the same day to serve as qualifying investments for millions in tax credits.
The lead attorney for the Finance Authority of Maine, which administers the program, put together a bill that calls for the elimination of one-day loans.
Two bills have been proposed in Congress that would consider extending the program that is aimed helping census tracts where either: the unemployment is 1.5 or more times the national average, where poverty rates are 30 percent or more, or where median incomes are less than 60 percent of the area median income.