Opportunity Zone Rules Should Clean Up Industrial Waste: EPA

The government’s environmental watchdog is asking the IRS to ensure a new tax break will apply to developers using the incentive to clean up old industrial sites.

The Environmental Protection Agency asked the Internal Revenue Service to clarify how investments made in brownfields—abandoned sites potentially contaminated by hazardous chemicals—can qualify for the new opportunity zones tax break, since the sites take more time to improve than the proposed rules currently allow.

The opportunity zones program, part of last year’s tax overhaul (Pub. L. No. 115-97), promises potentially massive tax breaks on capital gains that are recycled into ...