New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) are a federal tax incentive to encourage private investment in businesses and projects located in low‑income communities. The Treasury’s CDFI Fund awards “allocation authority” to certified Community Development Entities (CDEs). Investors put equity into these CDEs and receive a federal income tax credit equal to 39% of their investment, claimed over 7 years (5% in each of the first 3 years and 6% in each of the next 4). The CDE must then use that capital to make loans or equity investments in qualified projects (called QALICBs) in eligible low‑income areas, such as health clinics, factories, or small businesses.
The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) is a program within the U.S. Treasury that runs the NMTC program and other community‑development finance initiatives. For NMTC, it certifies Community Development Entities (CDEs), runs the competitive application process, and signs Allocation Agreements with each awardee. Those Allocation Agreements are binding contracts that set conditions on how NMTC authority can be used, and the CDFI Fund can amend, monitor, and enforce them, including determining non‑compliance and imposing remedies consistent with statute and regulation.
Modifying Allocation Agreements mainly tightens the rules on what NMTC dollars can be used for and how civil‑rights obligations are enforced; it does not change the basic tax credit that investors receive. Current awardees will likely see updated or supplemental agreement language that: (1) narrows or clarifies eligible activities; (2) incorporates explicit anti‑discrimination and executive‑order compliance language; and (3) spells out enforcement triggers and penalties. Future applicants will have to design projects and compliance systems to fit these stricter terms up front, and their applications will be scored and selected with those new priorities (e.g., measurable community outcomes, focus areas like housing, manufacturing, rural health) in mind. Treasury has also warned that failure to comply can now more readily lead to decertification, termination of unused credits, or recapture of awards.
For NMTC‑funded projects, Treasury is primarily referring to federal civil‑rights laws that apply to any program receiving federal financial assistance, especially: • Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibits race, color, or national‑origin discrimination) and Treasury’s implementing rule at 31 CFR Part 22. • Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (prohibits disability discrimination in federally assisted programs), implemented for Treasury in 31 CFR Part 27. NMTC allocation authority and related assistance are considered “federal financial assistance,” so CDEs and their projects cannot, for example, deny services, segregate, or apply eligibility rules that discriminate by race, national origin, or disability. Treasury now plans to make these requirements more explicit in NMTC Allocation Agreements and to enforce them through monitoring and potential sanctions.
Public documents do not list every specific step, but they outline the main elements of NMTC monitoring and enforcement: • CDEs must regularly report data on Qualified Equity Investments (QEIs) and Qualified Low‑Income Community Investments (QLICIs) through Treasury’s AMIS system; meeting QEI and QLICI thresholds from prior awards is an explicit eligibility condition for new allocations. • Treasury’s NMTC Compliance Monitoring and Evaluation framework (described in its NOAA and FAQs) allows file reviews, data checks, and targeted examinations to test whether investments match the Allocation Agreement and program rules. • If Treasury finds non‑compliance—such as failure to meet QEI/QLICI deployment thresholds, misuse of funds, or violation of NMTC or civil‑rights requirements—it can, “to the extent permitted by law,” decertify the CDE, terminate remaining unused allocation authority, or seek recapture of past NMTC awards. The new press release signals that these existing tools will now be used more aggressively and tied more directly to anti‑discrimination and executive‑order compliance.
Treasury has not yet published the detailed math behind the “20 percent increase,” but similar NMTC announcements measure rural and non‑metro investment as the share of total NMTC dollars projected to go into non‑metropolitan counties. In recent rounds, roughly 20% of NMTC investments (about $1–$1.2 billion out of a $5 billion round) were estimated for non‑metro counties; the new statement indicates that, relative to that prior share, the 2024–2025 allocations will direct about one‑fifth more capital to rural and non‑metro areas. Until the 2024–2025 Award Book and methodology are released, the precise baseline year and calculation cannot be confirmed.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is shorthand for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Public Law 119‑21), a large 2025 budget, tax, and spending law that implemented much of President Trump’s second‑term domestic agenda. Among many other provisions, it made the New Markets Tax Credit a permanent part of the Internal Revenue Code, ending the prior pattern of temporary authorizations that were periodically extended by Congress. That permanence is what Treasury is referencing when it says the bill gave investors and communities long‑term certainty about the NMTC program.