Several major commercial real estate groups are fighting a proposed federal tax provision that they say would have a devastating effect on real estate investment partnerships.

Commercial real estate groups contend that the Tax Extenders Act of 2009 (HR 4213) would more than double the taxes on carried interest received by general partners in real estate partnerships because the carried interest would no longer be taxed as capital gains at 15%, but as ordinary income with rates as high as 35%.

“That’s a huge increase at a time when the industry is on the precipice, so to speak,” says Thomas Bisacquino, president of the NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association. “There really isn’t any real estate-related group that supports it. We’re trying to stimulate the industry. We feel it would create a huge impediment.”

The House of Representatives passed the “tax extenders” bill on Dec. 10. It would prolong a number of tax breaks currently scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Although the bill contains elements that benefit commercial real estate, such as an extension of tax credits for owners who conserve energy through retrofits or remediate brownfields, the prospective change in policy toward real estate investment partnerships has many investors seeing red.

NAIOP has issued a “call to action” to its approximately 16,500 members urging them to contact senators to defeat the proposal. If enacted, it could bring about the largest modification to the taxation of real estate in more than 20 years, since the Tax Reform Act of 1986, NAIOP said in its alert.

The group added that the proposed tax change would have an effect far beyond the Wall Street hedge funds whose practices originally gave rise to the proposal.

The Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM), an association of property managers, has sent a joint letter with the National Association of Realtors and the CCIM Institute, urging all 100 U.S. senators not to change the current capital gains treatment of carried interest for real estate partnerships.

Other organizations are expressing similar concerns. “Changing the current capital gains treatment of carried interests would undermine job creation and have a negative impact on commercial real estate values, which would devastate local property tax revenues and put pension fund investments at risk,” says IREM’s senior legislative liaison Vijay Yadlapati. “Just as importantly, such a policy would slow the national economic recovery.”

This week, in IREM’s latest legislative report, the group says the loss of capital gains treatment for real estate investment partnerships would turn long established taxation rules upside down and have a far-reaching effect. “Real estate partnerships, from the smallest venture to the largest investment fund, have a carried interest component. Approximately $1 trillion of commercial and residential properties are held by partnerships.”

The tax measure would put additional pressure on the commercial real estate industry at a time when it already faces heavy burdens, IREM notes, including a rapid rise in delinquencies and foreclosures and restricted access to credit.

Because of the health care debate, the Senate is unlikely to introduce its own version of the tax extenders bill until early in 2010. But the commercial real estate groups fear that the Senate could quietly add the tax measure affecting partnerships to any unrelated bill now under consideration.

The Senate Finance Committee intends to take action on its own “tax extenders” bill shortly after lawmakers return from the holiday recess in mid-January, says Yadlapati. However, it’s not known whether the carried interest provision will be included in that bill.