Congress quietly offers tax break to mall owners on forgiven debt
H.R. 4115 — Saving Our MALLS Act · Filed by Claudia Tenney (R-NY) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Jun 24, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill amends the tax code to allow commercial and retail property owners to exclude certain debt forgiveness from taxable income. Specifically, if a mall, shopping center, or retail business had debt secured by real property that was incurred before March 1, 2023, and that debt was forgiven between December 31, 2023, and January 1, 2028, the owner can now treat the forgiven amount as non-taxable income rather than reporting it as taxable gain. This is a tax break for real estate owners in the retail and commercial property sector.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a targeted income-exclusion for a specific class of taxpayers (commercial/retail property owners) in a narrow time window. It is functionally a tax subsidy for real estate investors, not a broad public-interest measure.
What the text implies
- The time window (debt incurred before March 1, 2023; discharged Dec 31, 2023–Jan 1, 2028) appears designed to capture pandemic-era commercial real estate distress and foreclosures, creating a retroactive bailout for properties that may have already been written down or sold.
- The exclusion applies only to debt 'secured directly or indirectly' by specified real property, which may capture refinanced or restructured debt far removed from the original loan, broadening the benefit beyond the stated intent.
The full analysis lists 4 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
commercial real estate owners; retail property investors; mall operators and REITs