When clients call me looking to create tax deductions before year end, I generally deliver the bad news that if they want to bring their taxable income down they are going to have to spend some of their money or at least put it in a restricted account. This, however, is not necessarily the case with clients working in the construction industry. Clients in this industry do have an opportunity to create tax deductions for jobs that they have already completed that vastly exceeds any additional cash they will need to spend to create those deductions.
This elusive opportunity, to magnify the deductibility of cash outlays, is called the “179D Deduction”. The 179D deduction is available to the owner of a building that meets certain energy efficiency guidelines. More importantly for those of you who own or manage a construction, engineering or architecture firm; the government has the ability to allocate a 179D deduction to a contractor, engineer or architect who designed a newly constructed building or upgraded building system.
