State and local governments have utilized
leasing for decades as a significant means to
acquire the equipment and real property essential
to providing a host of public services to their
constituencies.
Below is a list of some of the
key advantages of municipal leasing:
100% financing, with no
deposit , and typically no large initial cash
outlays. Through municipal leasing, you can
avoid making a large capital outlay and acquire
the equipment over an extended period of
time.
Flexibility to match payments
to seasonal or changing cash flows.
Typically, voter approval is
not required to enter into a municipal
lease.
The Internal Revenue Code
(and amended in the Tax Reform Act) creates
non-taxable income for Lessors in municipal
lease financing. The Lessor passes this savings
on to the Lessee in the form of lower rates.
Because municipal leasing provides non-taxable
income opportunities for Lessors, the savings
can then in turn be passed back to governmental
agencies in the form of lower lease rates.
Documentation is streamlined
and much simpler than bond issuances.
Issuance costs are
substantially lower (or negated entirely) than
issuing general bond obligations. Bonding often
involves substantial legal fees, underwriting
costs and election expenses.
The municipality has the
ability to non-appropriate in any given fiscal
year. Only the individual fiscal year’s payment
obligation counts against the political
subdivision’s debt limit. The payments are a
current expense item payable through the normal
budgetary appropriations process.
By financing equipment,
working capital is preserved for better uses of
your cash assets.
Equity builds with each
payment. At the end of the lease term, full
ownership is vested with the municipality, with
no additional cost consideration. There is no
additional payment required at the end of the
term to purchase the equipment.
The municipal entity does not
incur the time, expense and political
implications of a bond election, as leases may
not be considered to be debt. Frequently, the
equipment acquisition may be too small to
justify bond financing, and yet too large an
expenditure for which to pay
cash