Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentive

The Department of the Interior National Park Service administers the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentive program (CFDA 15.961), which provides a 20-percent federal tax credit to property owners undertaking substantial rehabilitation of historic buildings in business or income-producing use, with the most recent grant award disbursed on July 31, 2018.

Program activity has stalled since 2018. The portfolio contains a single grant award of $88 thousand obligated through a Cooperative Agreement with the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO) for tax incentives reviewer training. No additional awards have been recorded in the eight years following that award, and no active solicitations are currently open. The two most recent grant opportunities posted in 2018 and 2019 were either notices of intent to award to a single recipient without competition or announcements of a training conference for SHPO staff; neither represents an open competitive funding pathway available to new applicants.

The program's structure as a tax credit mechanism, rather than a direct-grant program, explains the sparse grant-award portfolio. The majority of program activity flows through the federal tax system via the Internal Revenue Service, not through traditional grant disbursements from NPS. The single Cooperative Agreement in the recent portfolio funded training and capacity-building for state historic preservation officers who administer the tax credit at the state level, reflecting the program's reliance on state administration rather than direct federal grants to individual property owners.

Given the absence of grant awards or competitive solicitations since 2018 and the program's dependence on the tax system rather than grant mechanisms, pursuing funding under this Assistance Listing through traditional grant channels is not viable. Organizations interested in supporting historic rehabilitation should evaluate whether their activities qualify for the underlying tax credit itself or consider alternative federal historic preservation funding programs that operate as direct grant mechanisms.