LIHTC compliance is a documents game. The credits ride on proving, building by building and unit by unit, that you met the rules every single year. When the state agency does a file review, or the IRS opens an audit, the question is always the same: where is the document. Here are the ones that have to stay current, and the ones operators quietly let go stale.
Form 8609, the foundation
Every building gets its own Form 8609 and its own Building Identification Number. Part I comes from your state agency. You complete Part II in the first credit year, which is where the program election lives. The line people overlook is 8b, the multiple-building election that decides which buildings are treated as one project. That single checkbox drives everything downstream, including how transfers between buildings work. Keep the executed 8609 for every building somewhere you can actually find it.
The extended use agreement
The recorded covenant, which you may know as a Declaration of Land Use Restrictive Covenants, runs with the land and governs the extended use period of 30 years or more. It carries your rent and income restrictions and any amenity, service, or targeting commitments you made to win the allocation. Management needs a copy, and needs to actually follow what it says, not just file it.
The tenant file
Per unit, kept current: the Tenant Income Certification, the third-party income and asset verifications behind it, and the student status certification. Student status is the one that bites. It has to be certified annually on every LIHTC unit, even at a 100 percent property where the annual income recertification is waived. The income waiver does not touch the student rule.
Utility allowances and the limits
Your utility allowance has a source, and that source has to be current. So do your rent and income limits. HUD publishes the LIHTC limits, the MTSP limits, every year, and you have to implement the new ones within 45 days of the publication date. Run on last year's numbers and you are out of compliance without touching a single unit.
The owner's annual certification
Every year the owner certifies continuing compliance to the state agency, usually with a unit history or status report behind it. That certification has to line up with what you report to the IRS. It is the document that says, on the record, that you did everything the rest of the file is supposed to prove. A clean file and a sloppy certification is still a problem.
Keep it longer than you think
LIHTC record retention is long, and it surprises people. First-year records have to be kept for 21 years, six years past the last year of the compliance period. Everything else, at least six years. And records are kept by building and by unit, not thrown in one folder. The day you need a 2009 verification, that retention rule is the whole ballgame.
The documents to keep current
- Form 8609 and the line 8b election, per building
- The recorded extended use agreement, with its commitments
- Tenant Income Certifications, verifications, and annual student certs, per unit
- The utility allowance source, current
- Rent and income limits, updated within 45 days of HUD's MTSP release
- The owner's annual certification and unit history, matching the IRS
Why this is The Access's home turf
Keeping forty files current across buildings, anniversaries, and a 45-day limits clock is exactly the kind of thing that slips between people. The Access reads your documents and flags what is going stale before a file review does.
This is an operations summary, not legal or tax advice. Section 42 is governed by the IRS and your state housing agency, and the rules change. Confirm specifics with your compliance team and your accountant.