this gave the appearance of cities entering into leasing transactions with banks for a fee. by the late 1990s many of the leasing transactions were with cities in europe, and in 1999 cross border leasing in the united states was "chilled" by the effective shutdown of lilos (lease-in/lease outs). (lilos were significantly more complicated than the typical lease where a municipality (for example) would lease an asset to a bank and then lease it back from the bank for a shorter period of time; lilos relied on arcane rules of tax accounting to yield significant returns and are currently on a list of transaction types that the u.s. tax authority considers abusive.) since 2004 cross border leasing has been effectively eliminated by the passage of the jobs act of 2004, which made the vast majority of cross border leases unprofitable for the parties to the leasing transaction.