Public Finance & Government Payments · Issuer / Adviser Guide

Tracking a Muni Spending Exception

When a tax-exempt issue elects a spending exception under Treas. Reg. section 1.148-7, the rebate question turns into a schedule: spend stated percentages of gross proceeds by dates counted from issuance, and the arbitrage rebate falls away. Most issuers track that schedule in a consultant's workpaper they see once a year. This pack composes two nodes so the issuer's own finance office can check the schedule itself, on any date it chooses, and keep a receipt of each check, so the file that reaches counsel or the rebate analyst carries evidence rather than a recollection.

2-Node Pack Declared Inputs Only Per-Milestone Verdicts Zero PII
๐Ÿ”’ All inputs are processed locally in your browser. No data is transmitted. Do not enter real personal data – use synthetic or anonymised inputs only.
Not tax advice, and the fence is the point. Every input is SUPPLIED by you and treated as asserted. This pack opens no connection to a trustee, a paying agent, or a project fund ledger, and it cannot establish that a declared expenditure happened, on the declared date, in the declared amount. A milestone receipt is not a rebate computation, not an opinion that an exception is available to your issue, and not a filing. Whether an exception applies at all, and what a failed milestone means for your issue, are questions for qualified bond counsel and your rebate analyst.
The Two Nodes

How the pack is composed

Stage 1 does the arithmetic the regulation describes: milestone dates counted calendar-wise from the issue date, required percentages of gross proceeds, and a verdict per milestone. Stage 2 turns the resulting receipt into something you can hand over: a bundle labeled with exactly the verification tier its declared gate results support.

1Muni Arbitrage Spending-Exception Checkercheck_muni_arbitrage_spending_exception

The milestone check. You declare the issue date, gross proceeds, the elected exception, whether reasonable retainage was elected, any de minimis amount, and the expenditure schedule to date. The node builds the elected exception's milestone schedule, the 6-month, 18-month, or 24-month construction variant under Treas. Reg. section 1.148-7(c), (d), or (e), computes each milestone date calendar-wise from the issue date, and tests cumulative declared spending against each required amount. The de minimis allowance is capped at the lesser of 3 percent of gross proceeds or $150,000, and a declaration over the cap is rejected rather than quietly clamped. Retainage is never assumed: electing it is a declared boolean that swaps in the regulation's own retainage variant of the schedule.

2Evidence Bundle Tier Labelerassemble_ocg_evidence_bundle

The evidence bundle. The Stage 1 receipt's execution hash goes in, together with your declaration of which verification gates the receipt has passed, and out comes a shareable bundle stamped OCG-Verify, OCG-Execute, or OCG-Prove, whichever tier those declared results support. The label re-expresses gate outcomes you declare; it re-runs nothing and mints no new trust claim. Its value is honesty in transit: the person who receives the bundle sees exactly what has been verified about the receipt, and exactly what has not.

Where this sits next to the consultant: rebate compliance is a space served almost entirely by specialist consultants, and this pack does not replace them: the future-value rebate computation, yield questions, and the judgment calls all stay theirs. What the pack changes is what the issuer holds between engagements. A finance office that re-runs the check at each milestone date holds a dated, replayable receipt trail of its spending-exception position, instead of discovering the position annually, after the fact, in someone else's workpaper.
Reading the Run

Three verdicts, straight from the node

Unlike packs whose verdict is a reading rule over several receipts, this one's vocabulary comes from Stage 1 itself: every milestone gets exactly one of these three words, and the overall status follows mechanically. The discipline is in the third word. A milestone whose date has not arrived is PENDING, not passed, and most issues spend most of their spending period in that state.

MET
Cumulative declared spending as of the milestone date reached the required amount, after any declared de minimis allowance. Overall status is MET only when every milestone in the elected schedule has been met, which by construction cannot happen before the final milestone date.
FAILED
The milestone date has passed and cumulative declared spending had not reached the required amount. One failed milestone fails the overall status: under the cited regulation the elected exception is not satisfied, and the rebate question returns. The receipt records which milestone failed and by how much; what to do about it belongs to bond counsel.
PENDING
The milestone date is still ahead of the declared as_of_date. Not a failure and not a pass: the milestone has not yet had its chance to be met. Re-running the pack as each milestone date arrives, and filing each receipt, is the intended use, which is why the evaluation date is a declared input rather than the clock on your machine.
Reading a Receipt

What the receipt says, and what it doesn't

The receipt provesThe receipt does NOT prove
That the declared expenditure schedule, measured against the elected exception's milestone dates, produces the recorded per-milestone verdicts under the regulation's percentages.That the declared expenditures happened, on those dates, in those amounts. A schedule copied from a faulty draw report checks out exactly as well as a true one.
That milestone dates were computed calendar-wise from the declared issue date, and the de minimis allowance stayed inside the lesser of 3 percent of gross proceeds or $150,000.That the elected exception is available to this issue in the first place, or that gross proceeds were measured correctly. Both are counsel questions the node takes as declared.
That the evidence bundle's tier label matches the gate results declared for the receipt, per the cumulative SIDECAR.1 tiers.That any gate actually passed. The label re-expresses your declaration; a wrong declaration produces a confidently wrong label.
That a third party can replay the same arithmetic from the same declared inputs and reach the same execution_hash.That any rebate amount is owed or not owed, that a filing obligation is satisfied, or that any regulatory duty has been discharged.
Context

The schedules, as dated observations

Carried from the node itself rather than restated here as facts of our own. Confirm current regulatory text with bond counsel before planning against any of them.

The three exception schedulesdated observation

As read on 2026-08-07 and carried in art-569: the 6-month exception under Treas. Reg. section 1.148-7(c) requires 100 percent spent by 6 months, or 95 percent by 6 months and 100 percent by 12 with reasonable retainage. The 18-month exception under -7(d) steps through 15, 60, and 100 percent at 6, 12, and 18 months. The 24-month construction exception under -7(e) steps through 10, 45, 75, and 100 percent at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. Each retainage variant extends the final milestone as the regulation provides.

What stays outside the packscope note

The future-value arbitrage rebate computation, the thing an issuer ultimately owes or does not owe, is deliberately not in this pack and not in any node it composes. IRS Pub 5271 describes the wider rebate-compliance picture the milestone tests sit inside, as of its 2016 edition; it is cited as orientation, not authority. The milestone receipt is the piece of that picture a finance office can produce for itself.

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