On July 4th, 2025, President Trump signed The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) into law, which passed Congress through the reconciliation process. The legislation includes several tax changes and updates that build upon the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which was passed in Trump’s first term. The major updates include changes to the R&D Tax Credit, expansion of the Section 199a deduction, return of 100% bonus depreciation, increase in the SALT Cap, permanent extension of the New Markets Tax Credit, and much more.

In November 2024, the IRS announced that interest rates will decrease for the first quarter of 2025, which begins January 1, 2025. The changes outlined in IR-2024-290 outline all the relevant interest rate changes including various reductions.

At the end of December, President Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 into law. While the primary purpose of the legislation was to allocate federal funding for the coming year, it did contain several other parcels of legislation within. One of these was the Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2021, more commonly referred to as the SECURE Act 2.0. The long-awaited legislation aimed at new retirement savings reform is based on many of the changes initially proposed both in the House and Senate. These include changes to plan design, modified RMD rules, matching student loan payments, and expanded eligibility for part-time employees.

In late August, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. As the name suggests, the legislation is designed to help counter the ill effects of inflation while creating new jobs, lowering healthcare costs, revitalizing manufacturing, and promoting clean energy investment. Key priorities in the legislation include the reduction of carbon emissions and the investment in domestic clean energy manufacturing. To facilitate the changes, several tax updates have been introduced including a 15% corporate minimum tax, a 1% stock buyback fee, and bolstered IRS tax enforcement efforts. There are also new and expanded tax incentives to promote clean energy investments. These incentives create a unique opportunity for real estate and construction companies to obtain significant tax savings.

The conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to make changes to adapt to the “new normal.” For example, the stay-at-home orders, social distancing requirements, and other customer/employee safety measures resulted in limiting the number of employees on the production floor, installing new barriers to prevent transmission, adding sanitization protocols, and much more. At the same time, office buildings were virtually empty as employees were permitted to work from home under remote work policies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly created challenging economic conditions for New Jersey and Pennsylvania-area businesses. Unfortunately, the issues which occurred during the onset of the pandemic, including but not limited to high unemployment, limited access to working capital, and the need for modified business models, have yet to subside.

While many sectors have started to recover from the devastating blow brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that the construction industry is still struggling. The details of how this is happening are outlined in the March 2021 AGC Coronavirus Survey, published by the Associated General Contractors of America.

On March 31, 2021, the Biden Administration released an overview of The American Jobs Plan (Plan), which broadly outlines a proposed $2T modernization investment in the nation’s transportation, environmental and digital infrastructure and spread over eight fiscal years. The Plan includes fixing highways, upgrading ports, airports, and other transit centers. It calls for the modernization of public buildings, including federal facilities, upgrades to water delivery infrastructure, and revitalization of American manufacturing and innovation.

I recently attended the Princeton Mercer Regional Chamber’s 8th Annual 2021 Central NJ Real Estate Forecast. I joined nearly 300 others virtually for a very insightful discussion from some of the industry’s top experts.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to reverberate across the nation. Many businesses have been forced to make changes to operations, product/service offerings, vendors, financing, and capital investments.