President Bush signed a measure on Saturday to ensure that nonprofit endowments and other tax-exempt investors would not be penalized by a policy that was designed to curb abusive corporate tax shelters, reports The New York Times.

The corporate deals were intended to halt the practice of corporations buying tax-exempt property such as public land or assets and then leasing them back to cities and states to acquire tax breaks.

Although the Treasury Department and the IRS had not taken action against partnerships with tax-exempt investors since 2004, a moratorium on applying the law to nonabusive partnerships would have expired at the end of 2007. President Bush’s amendment will protect investment partnerships whose investors include tax-exempt entities but does not allow tax-exempt organizations to engage in abusive transactions.

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