26 CFR § 1.141-9 Unrelated or disproportionate use test | Code of Federal Regulations | US Law

26 CFR § 1.141-9

Unrelated or disproportionate use test

June 25, 2020

CFR

(a) General rules—(1) Description of test. Under section 141(b)(3) (the unrelated or disproportionate use test), an issue meets the private business tests if the amount of private business use and private security or payments attributable to unrelated or disproportionate private business use exceeds 5 percent of the proceeds of the issue. For this purpose, the private business use test is applied by taking into account only use that is not related to any government use of proceeds of the issue (unrelated use) and use that is related but disproportionate to any government use of those proceeds (disproportionate use).

(2) Application of unrelated or disproportionate use test—(i) Order of application. The unrelated or disproportionate use test is applied by first determining whether a private business use is related to a government use. Next, private business use that relates to a government use is examined to determine whether it is disproportionate to that government use.

(ii) Aggregation of unrelated and disproportionate use. All the unrelated use and disproportionate use financed with the proceeds of an issue are aggregated to determine compliance with the unrelated or disproportionate use test. The amount of permissible unrelated and disproportionate private business use is not reduced by the amount of private business use financed with the proceeds of an issue that is neither unrelated use nor disproportionate use.

(iii) Deliberate actions. A deliberate action that occurs after the issue date does not result in unrelated or disproportionate use if the issue meets the conditions of §1.141-12(a).

(b) Unrelated use—(1) In general. Whether a private business use is related to a government use financed with the proceeds of an issue is determined on a case-by-case basis, emphasizing the operational relationship between the government use and the private business use. In general, a facility that is used for a related private business use must be located within, or adjacent to, the governmentally used facility.

(2) Use for the same purpose as government use. Use of a facility by a nongovernmental person for the same purpose as use by a governmental person is not treated as unrelated use if the government use is not insignificant. Similarly, a use of a facility in the same manner both for private business use that is related use and private business use that is unrelated use does not result in unrelated use if the related use is not insignificant. For example, a privately owned pharmacy in a governmentally owned hospital does not ordinarily result in unrelated use solely because the pharmacy also serves individuals not using the hospital. In addition, use of parking spaces in a garage by a nongovernmental person is not treated as unrelated use if more than an insignificant portion of the parking spaces are used for a government use (or a private business use that is related to a government use), even though the use by the nongovernmental person is not directly related to that other use.

(c) Disproportionate use—(1) Definition of disproportionate use. A private business use is disproportionate to a related government use only to the extent that the amount of proceeds used for that private business use exceeds the amount of proceeds used for the related government use. For example, a private use of $100 of proceeds that is related to a government use of $70 of proceeds results in $30 of disproportionate use.

(2) Aggregation of related uses. If two or more private business uses of the proceeds of an issue relate to a single government use of those proceeds, those private business uses are aggregated to apply the disproportionate use test.

(3) Allocation rule. If a private business use relates to more than a single use of the proceeds of the issue (for example, two or more government uses of the proceeds of the issue or a government use and a private use), the amount of any disproportionate use may be determined by—

(i) Reasonably allocating the proceeds used for the private business use among the related uses;

(ii) Aggregating government uses that are directly related to each other; or

(iii) Allocating the private business use to the government use to which it is primarily related.

(d) Maximum use taken into account. The determination of the amount of unrelated use or disproportionate use of a facility is based on the maximum amount of reasonably expected government use of a facility during the measurement period. Thus, no unrelated use or disproportionate use arises solely because a facility initially has excess capacity that is to be used by a nongovernmental person if the facility will be completely used by the issuer during the term of the issue for more than an insignificant period.

(e) Examples. The following examples illustrate the application of this section:

Example 1. School and remote cafeteria. County X issues bonds with proceeds of $20 million and uses $18.1 million of the proceeds for construction of a new school building and $1.9 million of the proceeds for construction of a privately operated cafeteria in its administrative office building, which is located at a remote site. The bonds are secured, in part, by the cafeteria. The $1.9 million of proceeds is unrelated to the government use (that is, school construction) financed with the bonds and exceeds 5 percent of $20 million. Thus, the issue meets the private business tests.

Example 2. Public safety building and courthouse. City Y issues bonds with proceeds of $50 million for construction of a new public safety building ($32 million) and for improvements to an existing courthouse ($15 million). Y uses $3 million of the bond proceeds for renovations to an existing privately operated cafeteria located in the courthouse. The bonds are secured, in part, by the cafeteria. Y's use of the $3 million for the privately operated cafeteria does not meet the unrelated or disproportionate use test because these expenditures are neither unrelated use nor disproportionate use.

Example 3. Unrelated garage. City Y issues bonds with proceeds of $50 million for construction of a new public safety building ($30.5 million) and for improvements to an existing courthouse ($15 million). Y uses $3 million of the bond proceeds for renovations to an existing privately operated cafeteria located in the courthouse. The bonds are secured, in part, by the cafeteria. Y also uses $1.5 million of the proceeds to construct a privately operated parking garage adjacent to a private office building. The private business use of the parking garage is unrelated to any government use of proceeds of the issue. Since the proceeds used for unrelated uses and disproportionate uses do not exceed 5 percent of the proceeds, the unrelated or disproportionate use test is not met.

Example 4. Disproportionate use of garage. County Z issues bonds with proceeds of $20 million for construction of a hospital with no private business use ($17 million); renovation of an office building with no private business use ($1 million); and construction of a garage that is entirely used for a private business use ($2 million). The use of the garage is related to the use of the office building but not to the use of the hospital. The private business use of the garage results in $1 million of disproportionate use because the proceeds used for the garage ($2 million) exceed the proceeds used for the related government use ($1 million). The bonds are not private activity bonds, however, because the disproportionate use does not exceed 5 percent of the proceeds of the issue.

Example 5. Bonds for multiple projects. (i) County W issues bonds with proceeds of $80 million for the following purposes: (1) $72 million to construct a County-owned and operated waste incinerator; (2) $1 million for a County-owned and operated facility for the temporary storage of hazardous waste prior to final disposal; (3) $1 million to construct a privately owned recycling facility located at a remote site; and (4) $6 million to build a garage adjacent to the County-owned incinerator that will be leased to Company T to store and repair trucks that it owns and uses to haul County W refuse. Company T uses 75 percent of its trucks to haul materials to the incinerator and the remaining 25 percent of its trucks to haul materials to the temporary storage facility.

(ii) The $1 million of proceeds used for the recycling facility is used for an unrelated use. The garage is related use. In addition, 75 percent of the use of the $6 million of proceeds used for the garage is allocable to the government use of proceeds at the incinerator. The remaining 25 percent of the proceeds used for the garage ($1.5 million) relates to the government use of proceeds at the temporary storage facility. Thus, this portion of the proceeds used for the garage exceeds the proceeds used for the temporary storage facility by $0.5 million and this excess is disproportionate use (but not unrelated use). Thus, the aggregate amount of unrelated use and disproportionate use financed with the proceeds of the issue is $1.5 million. Alternatively, under paragraph (c)(3)(iii) of this section, the entire garage may be treated as related to the government use of the incinerator and, under that allocation, the garage is not disproportionate use. In either event, section 141(b)(3) limits the aggregate unrelated use and disproportionate use to $4 million. Therefore, the bonds are not private activity bonds under this section.

[T.D. 8712, 62 FR 2297, Jan. 16, 1997]

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