Yes, The Thing touches everything.
COVID-19 affects the muni bond world in some fairly obvious ways. The general mandate is “everybody do less.” Decreasing activity in general translates to decreased business revenues and decreased tax revenues, which means less money available to repay bonds. This has set the disclosure world ablaze, as securities lawyers ponder what to say to the market about the pandemic. That very practical question is far beyond the bounds of this blog and will be dealt with ad nauseum elsewhere, such as this piece in The Bond Buyer.
There are a few less obvious ways that the disease will affect the tax requirements for tax-advantaged bonds. We’ll look at them in a series of posts. Click through for a teaser. (I guess that makes the previous sentence a meta-teaser?)
The Public Finance Tax Blog
By Johnny Hutchinson on March 16, 2020
Squire Patton Boggs