Will IRA Tax Credit Transfers Meet Same Fate As Safe Harbor Leasing?

This opinion piece puts the transferability component of the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA, P.L. 117-169) energy tax credit changes into historical context. A musical accompaniment is necessary to properly set the stage. Since readers probably shouldn’t play YouTube clips at work, we’ll have to rely on memories here.

It’s 1924, and a group of young men in white shorts and white shirts embroidered with Union Jacks are running through the surf and getting spattered with mud on an overcast day in the United Kingdom. A synthesizer trumpet sounds, and then the pulsating notes of Vangelis’s famous title sequence in Chariots of Fire begin. Your recollection of the Academy Award-winning score will have to take it from there. The film was released in the United States in the fall of 1981, shortly after President Ronald Reagan took a victory lap after signing into law the massive tax cuts he promised on the campaign trail.