Editorial: Time to rethink impact of REITs

The drumbeat is growing louder — as it has at each legislative session in recent years — to eliminate a property investment tax incentive provided for the real estate investment trust, or REIT. On Thursday, the sound emanated from a demonstration by unionized hotel workers and others backing a bill to eliminate that exemption for companies that own hotels.

But other categories of income-generating real estate figure in this, too. Shopping and retail centers, including Ala Moana Center, as well as office buildings and industrial parks, are owned by investors in the trust who pay income tax in their own home state on the dividends paid to them. The REITs get a tax deduction, as long as 90% of the profits are distributed as dividends.

This means that taxes are paid in the states of the investors, not where the property is located — a particularly acute issue for Hawaii. Property values are so high here, and many of these developments produce enormous income.

Unite Here Local 5 members were protesting at the state Capitol that the hotels where they work get a benefit from the tax code while many of its members, the hotel workers themselves, have not been called back since the pandemic shut down tourism.

They, and others who rightly believe taxes are owed in the place where the profit was generated, are rallying behind Senate Bill 2246. Like SB 785 and House Bill 283, held over from the 2021 legislative session, it would disallow the REIT deduction.

None of these bills have yet had a hearing. That should be corrected this session, despite one key obstacle placed in their way: A similar bill lawmakers passed in 2019 was vetoed by Gov. David Ige.

Ige likely would restate his concern that the elimination of the deduction would suppress investor interest in supplying capital for the projects. That is the primary point that trust proponents also make.

The rational counterargument from REIT deduction opponents is that, as a lucrative target for investors, Hawaii has few equals. They make the strong case that Hawaii is losing more value from the deduction than it would risk by making this tax adjustment.

Another wrinkle: Last session HB 286 became law. It requires disclosure about where REITs are established and report their assets and annual revenues. This applies to the 2022 tax year and thereafter, so it is likely that lawmakers could argue for more time for these reports, and details of the REIT economy, to come in.

But there is already significant evidence of the value that REITs redirect out of state. The National Association of REITs in 2019 estimated the worth of the trusts in Hawaii at $18 billion, properties with an estimated taxable income of around $1 billion.

Further, the updated data HB 286 will generate, while important, shouldn’t negate the need to hear these bills. Nor does it eliminate the imperative to reevaluate where things now stand.

SB 2246 also seeks to capitalize more on Hawaii’s property by imposing a conveyance tax vacancy surcharge of 1% on properties left vacant for 180 days or more each calendar year. And it would direct 10% of REIT tax revenues to the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp. to fund housing projects. These elements of the bill also deserve discussion.

The economic toll the pandemic has taken on the local economy is coming into sharper focus. There is a budget surplus this year, owing to the recovery so far, aided by pandemic relief funds.

Still, that aid is a temporary boost, and Hawaii will need to bolster its own tax base without federal aid. The state surely will need to claim some of that from its wealth-producing real estate assets.