Today, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act of 2013, which would strengthen tax incentives for commercial real-estate owners who retrofit fire sprinklers in office spaces,nursing homes and other buildings. The International Association of Fire Chiefs earlier this year asked fire chiefs to contact their congressional representatives to request they pass the act, a piece of legislation introduced in both the House and the Senate.
Under current law, commercial building owners must depreciate fire sprinkler retrofits over a 39-year period. The Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act reclassifies fire sprinkler retrofits as 15-year depreciable property, according to the NFPA. The bill also provides an option to certain small businesses to qualify for an immediate tax benefit on fire system upgrades.
"I often say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that is certainly the case with unexpected and often tragic fires," Carper said in a statement. "Each year, we lose thousands of lives and billions of dollars of property due to building fires. One way to reduce those numbers is to ensure that building owners are able to employ modern, effective fire sprinkler systems.”
In addition to accelerated depreciation incentives, the bill also provides small businesses with an up-front tax write-off for fire sprinkler upgrades, instead of forcing them to wait years or decades under existing law to claim the tax benefit.

The loss in January of more than 200 people at the Kiss nightclub fire in Santa Maria, Brazil, is another reminder why Congress must pass the Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act, said Chief Alan Perdue, retired director of Guilford County (N.C.) Emergency Services and a member of the IAFC’s Fire and Life Safety Section.
“I talk to a lot of business owners who want to update but say it doesn’t make businesssense to do so,” Purdue said about installing sprinklers when the IAFC first released their call to action. “They are operating a business, so we think this method to provide an incentive creates a win-win situation for American’s fire service and business owners.”
The NFPA reports that every year in the U.S., there are more than 3,000 civilian deaths, roughly 100 firefighter deaths and more than 16,000 injuries due to fire. The directproperty damage caused by fire is more than $15 billion and indirect costs associated with fire, such as lost economic activity, is more than $100 billion.