Thursday I attended a seminar on the Opportunity Zones that were created as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2017.  The overlooked provision of the law has the potential to attract a lot of investment in poorer communities. The short explanation is that investing in Opportunity Zone projects or businesses allows you to defer capital gains as much as ten years, and then increase the cost basis of the investments made in the Opportunity Zones by up to 15%. If you hold the investment for ten years, the gains on the investment are tax-free.

There are 86 such zones in SW PA, some 300 statewide. Some of them are places where there is already redevelopment buzz or projects, like the Hill District, Hazelwood and Homewood. The bad news is there are still no regulations published by the IRS yet, meaning that investors are still waiting out to see what the rules will be. By year’s end (at worst) this should be accomplished. You can read more about the zones at the DCED web site.

Project news is quite lean. The economic news of the week was Friday’s jobs report, which showed the US employers adding 157,000 jobs in July. That’s a decline from June’s total but still brisk enough to keep the average monthly gain for 2018 above 200,000 jobs. Economists believe the hiring pace would have been better but for the lack of applicants in the job market.