Sponsors (2)
The bill provides a meaningful 30% tax credit and resilience incentives for working-waterfront projects and extends benefits to U.S. territories, but caps, timing limits, nonrefundable status, and strict compliance rules mean many small, new, or large multi-phase projects may still face substantial upfront costs or be unable to fully realize the credit.
Small business owners, waterfront-property owners, and other taxpayers can receive a 30% tax credit (up to $300,000 per taxpayer) for qualifying working-waterfront projects, reducing upfront project costs and improving project viability; special progress-expenditure rules allow claiming credits as projects proceed to support phased financing.
Working-waterfront businesses and coastal/rural communities benefit from projects built to stronger ICC building-code standards, increasing resilience to flood and erosion and lowering future repair, closure, or disaster-recovery risk.
Residents of U.S. territories benefit because the bill provides payments to possessions to offset lost tax revenue or to pass benefits through to territorial residents, promoting equity across jurisdictions.
Loss-making, newly formed, or low-liability taxpayers (including many small businesses) cannot fully use the credit because it is nonrefundable, meaning they may get little or no immediate tax benefit.
Small-business owners and larger or multi-phase projects may receive insufficient or infrequent relief because the credit is capped at $300,000 per taxpayer (aggregated across related employers) and may be claimed only once every 10 years, leaving substantial remaining out-of-pocket costs or delayed incentives for follow-on investments.
Stronger design and compliance requirements (ICC codes and Secretary-prescribed methods) increase upfront design/construction costs and administrative burden for taxpayers and contractors seeking the credit, raising entry costs and complicating eligibility.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Creates a 30% nonrefundable tax credit (cap $300,000, inflation‑indexed) for qualifying investments in working‑waterfront disaster mitigation projects, with a 10‑year reuse limit.
Introduced August 1, 2025 by Chellie Pingree · Last progress August 1, 2025
Creates a new nonrefundable tax credit equal to 30% of a taxpayer's qualified investment in a qualifying "working waterfront disaster mitigation" project, with a per-taxpayer credit cap of $300,000 (indexed for inflation after 2026). The credit is limited by aggregation rules for related taxpayers, treats certain progress expenditures specially, excludes rehabilitation expenditures, and bars a taxpayer from claiming the credit if they claimed it in any of the prior 10 taxable years (with a narrow exception for qualified progress expenditures). The provision is added to the Internal Revenue Code as a new investment tax credit entry and applies to eligible depreciable or amortizable property placed in service as part of qualifying projects for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2026 (with indexing of the cap thereafter).