R 206.206 Certification; credit reservation priority.

Rule 206. (1) State historic preservation applications will be reviewed upon receipt, and the office shall issue either a preapproval letter or a priority number based on the date that a complete and adequately documented state part 2 application was received by the office and the amount of available tax credits. When making preapprovals, the office shall offer the maximum amount of available credit, not to exceed 25% of the estimated qualified expenditures, to the first applicant of a particular project type that has submitted a complete application to the office. If the available credit is less than the full credit anticipated by the applicant, the applicant may accept the reduced amount of credit or decline the offer and accept a priority number based on the date of the applicant's completed application. An applicant that declines a partial credit offer may receive additional credit offers, based on their requested amount of credit and priority number as additional credit becomes available. Declining a credit offer does not extend the 2-year limit on the original priority number assigned to the application. (2) In any year, if the maximum amount of credit allocated to a specific project type or the annual maximum credit limit for the program is reached, the office shall do the following: (a) Notify the public via its website that the office will no longer accept any additional applications for that project type or the program for the remainder of the year. (b) Assign a priority number to all remaining complete applications that did not receive a preapproval letter. Priority numbers will be assigned to each application based on the date the completed application was received by the office. (c) Allow applicants that submitted incomplete applications to submit a revised application. In the event a revised application is determined to be complete, the application must be assigned a priority number based on the date the revised complete application was received by the office. (d) In the last month of each year, the office shall review all applications that have been assigned priority numbers and based on the lowest priority number, contact applicants to verify if the applicants are still seeking credit for a project. If so, the office shall do the following: (i) Issue a preapproval letter for any recaptured, unclaimed, or returned credits from previous years to other applications within that project type based on priority numbers. If there are no applications within that specific project type that will accept the recaptured, unclaimed, or returned credit, then it must be made available to any approved application, regardless of project type, based on priority number. (ii) Notify any applicants that have not received a preapproval letter and that have a priority number that was issued at least 2 years before the review date that the application has expired, the applicant is no longer be eligible for any available credit, and the applicant will need to submit a new application if the applicant wants to continue to seek a credit. (iii)Determine which projects will receive funding in the next year based on priority number and project types. (iv) Post on its website the total amount of credit, if any, per project type that will be available to new applications in the subsequent year. (3) On the first business day of the new year, the office shall begin accepting new applications for that year for all project types with available credits until any or all conditions in subrule (2) of this rule are met.