Latest news with #taxcredits
Fast Company
8 hours ago
- Automotive
- Fast Company
How to use the clean energy tax credits before they're gone
If you want to buy an electric vehicle —or solar panels or a heat pump or home battery—there's a short window of time to make use of the existing federal tax credits currently available. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the tax credits were supposed to last 10 years. Now, thanks to the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill, there are only about 10 weeks left to claim the EV tax credits before they disappear. Other clean energy tax credits will expire at the end of the year. Here's what you need to know if you want to make use of them to help cut emissions and save on your energy bills. New electric vehicles Deadline: September 30 If you need a new car, it's a good time to get an EV. Models qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 if they're assembled in North America and meet American sourcing requirements for battery parts and critical minerals. There's a price limit of $55,000 for cars and $80,000 for trucks, and an income limit for taxpayers ($150,000 for single filers). You can claim the credit on your tax return next year, but many dealerships also offer the option to transfer the credit to the dealer and get an immediate discount. For foreign-made EVs, you may still be able to get a discount if you lease a car through a loophole that classifies leased cars as 'commercial clean vehicles.' The dealer can get the tax credit and pass on the savings to you. Used electric vehicles Deadline: September 30 The market for used EVs is booming; they've outsold used gas cars for five out of the last seven months. More than a third of the EVs available now are under $25,000. That's the price limit for used cars to qualify for a $4,000 tax credit. (Cars also have to be purchased from a licensed dealer, be at least two years old, and on resale for the first time.) The income limit for taxpayers is lower than for new cars: For a single person, your adjusted gross income needs to be $75,000 or less. EV chargers Deadline: June 2026 If you need an EV charger in your garage, you have more time to make your purchase: The tax credit of up to $1,000 doesn't expire until next summer. Rooftop solar Deadline: December 31 Like some of the other clean energy credits, the tax credit for solar panels existed long before the Biden administration. For the past 20 years, if you installed solar panels or solar shingles on your roof, you could get a 30% tax credit (on average, worth around $4,600). Now it's going away. Adding solar to your home can help save thousands per year on electric bills. If you pair the panels with home battery storage, you can also have clean backup power when the grid goes down. If you lease solar panels rather than buying them, the incentives last a little longer: Companies that lease solar can claim federal tax credits until 2027 and pass on savings to you. But because tariffs are pushing prices up, it may still make sense to act sooner. Battery storage, including some induction stoves Deadline: December 31 Even if you don't have rooftop solar, a home battery can help you save money and cut emissions by storing electricity when there's extra renewable energy available on the grid. To qualify for the current 30% tax credit, the battery must have a capacity of at least 3 kilowatt-hours. It includes sleek wall units and even high-end induction stoves that double as battery storage. Like companies that lease solar, those that lease batteries have longer to claim tax credits—until the 2030s, in this case. Geothermal heating Deadline: December 31 Even if you live in a climate that's sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter, the temperature underground stays steady. Geothermal heat pumps tap into this, transferring heat into a house in the winter and reversing the process in the summer to keep the house cool. They're pricey, with costs ranging from $15,000 to $35,000 or more. The current tax credit offers 30% of the cost of the tech and installation, with no cap and no income limit for the taxpayer. Again, there's a longer timeline for companies that lease geothermal systems to claim credits and offer consumers some savings. Air-source heat pumps Deadline: December 31 Air-source heat pumps pull heat from the air, even in cold climates like Maine. Swapping out a gas furnace and air conditioner for air-source heat pumps (either a central system or mini splits) can help you save hundreds of dollars per year on energy bills. Heat pumps are around three times more efficient than traditional heating. If your current HVAC system is nearing the end of its life, this could be a good time to invest. Heat pumps are pricey, with an average whole-home system costing nearly $20,000; a single-zone system can cost around $6,000. The current 30% tax credit has a cap of $2,000. Water heaters Deadline: December 31 A heat pump water heater is as much as four times as efficient as a standard water heater, and can help save around $200 per year for some homes. The current tax credit covers up to 30% of the cost, with a cap of $2,000. Solar water heaters, which use a rooftop system to heat water, are eligible for a 30% credit with no cap. Weatherization, electrical upgrades, and home energy audits Deadline: December 31 To help make your house more energy-efficient, you can get tax credits of up to 30% on insulation and air sealing ($1,200 cap); exterior doors (up to $500); and windows and skylights ($600). Electrical upgrades are capped at $600. (In total, weatherization and electrical upgrades can't get a credit larger than $1,200 for the year.) Another tax credit offers $150 for a professional home energy audit. Next steps Under the IRA, with incentives that would have been in place for a decade, homeowners could slowly make upgrades as existing equipment wore out. Now they have to make harder decisions about what to prioritize in the next few months. Even without the tax credits, there are still thousands of other incentives in place from states, local governments, and utility companies. The savings calculator from the nonprofit Rewiring America can help you find additioal ways to save. The IRA's rebates for clean energy products weren't cut in the reconciliation bill, and some states have rolled out rebate programs using those funds. Meanwhile, energy prices are expected to keep going up. That's both because of the huge energy demand from companies like data centers and because the Big Beautiful Bill made it much harder to build new renewable energy, the cheapest source of new power. Investing in solar, heat pumps, or other clean devices is 'a way for homeowners to get themselves off the roller coaster of ever-increasing energy prices,' says Alex Amend, communications director at Rewiring America. Even without the tax credits to help with up-front costs, the new equipment can make sense financially over its lifetime. 'As soon as you've flipped the switch, you're going to be saving hundreds of dollars annually,' Amend says. 'That's still very much worth the investment.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Lisa Murkowski Suddenly Realizes She Got Played on Trump Budget Bill
Remember all of those hefty handouts Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski won in exchange for sealing the deal on Donald Trump's behemoth budget bill? It looks like the president has found a way to get out of delivering. 'I feel cheated,' Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News Friday. 'I feel like we made a deal and then hours later, a deal was made to somebody else.' Ahead of the bill's passage earlier this month, Murkowski had co-sponsored an amendment to ease the phaseout of tax credits for solar and wind energy under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. Her measure would ensure a 12-month window for clean energy projects, which would end in 2027. These tax credits would help to alleviate a looming energy crisis along Alaska's Railbelt, the electrical grid that serves roughly 75 percent of the population, due to declining resources of natural gas. Trump threw a wrench in that agreement Friday when he issued an executive order to 'end market distorting subsidies' for green energy projects. The order directs Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to take actions to 'strictly enforce the termination of the clean electricity production and investment tax credits.' Now Murkowski claims that she and her pals were duped. 'Do I feel like the administration was not being up-front with us? Yes,' she told the Anchorage Daily News. She torched Trump's order as 'reckless,' claiming that it directly 'goes against' what he signed into law earlier this month with the budget. Murkowski was the deciding vote to pass Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' through the Senate, green-lighting the gutting of social programs such as SNAP and Medicaid while extending tax breaks for the rich, and agreeing to add trillions to the national deficit. She'd sent the bill back to the House with the hopes that lawmakers would continue to refine the massive tax and spending bill, only for it to be immediately passed and then signed into law. But under the Trump administration, which regularly skirts congressional authority to withhold federal spending and obliterate government agencies, lawmakers should know better than to think the president actually cares about the law of the land.
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
New Federal Tax Credit Boosts School Choice—but Blue States Face Big Decision
School-choice advocates won a major victory with President Trump's tax megabill—but it comes with a catch. The federal government will now subsidize private-school tuition, via unusually generous tax credits for donations to nonprofits. However, governors must opt into the program. Democratic-led states may reject it, derailing school-choice advocates' goal for a nationwide effort.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
3 Ways Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill' Could Hit Tesla Investors
Tesla investors have had a rough go in 2025, with a stock price that's down by more than one-fifth year-to-date and a major slump in global electric vehicle sales. I'm a Self-Made Millionaire: Learn More: Now, the Elon Musk-led company faces more grim news in the form of President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful' spending bill, which was signed into law on July 4th. Among other things, the bill will bring an end to federal tax credits on certain EVs. Here are three ways the bill could hit Tesla investors. Tax Credits Will End Federal tax incentives played a big role in boosting Tesla's EV sales in recent years, but those incentives will soon come to an end. Because of Trump's bill, buyers have until Sept. 30 to qualify for the federal tax credits on Tesla EVs before they're terminated, CBS News reported. Before the bill passed, new EVs came with a $7,500 federal tax credit, while used EVs came with credits of up to $4,000. The idea behind the credits was to make EVs more affordable. That's important, because the average purchase price of a new EV is about $9,000 higher in the U.S. than the average new gas-powered car, according to Kelley Blue Book data cited by CBS News. Used EVs cost roughly $2,000 more than comparable gas cars, on average. An end to the tax credit will hurt Tesla — and Tesla shareholders — because it narrows the number of potential EV buyers. I Sold My Tesla: Rival EV Companies Will Get a Boost As Business Insider reported, one key provision in the new bill is that cars made by companies that sold more than 200,000 'accepted' EVs between December 31, 2009 and December 31, 2025 do not qualify for the tax credit. This provision will mainly impact Tesla, which sells a lot more cars than that in a single quarter. In contrast, rivals Rivian and Lucid have not reached the 200,000 milestone, meaning their customers can still get tax credits. This could give them an edge against Tesla, at least over the short term. Sales Could Decline Further Tesla's EV sales have already slumped badly this year. The company recently posted second-quarter car sales of 384,122 — down 13.5% from the previous year, CNN reported. It was the biggest year-over-year decline in Tesla history, and followed a similarly dismal first quarter. Trump's spending bill will likely hurt sales even further because buyers will no longer have the same tax incentives. This means they'll have to dish out more money to buy a Tesla than in the past. 'It's on Tesla to make the case for consumers to even slightly pay up today versus some other EVs,' Seth Goldstein, an equity strategist at Morningstar, told Business Insider. More From GOBankingRates 4 Housing Markets That Have Plummeted in Value Over the Past 5 Years This article originally appeared on 3 Ways Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' Could Hit Tesla Investors
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
3 Ways Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill' Could Hit Tesla Investors
Tesla investors have had a rough go in 2025, with a stock price that's down by more than one-fifth year-to-date and a major slump in global electric vehicle sales. I'm a Self-Made Millionaire: Learn More: Now, the Elon Musk-led company faces more grim news in the form of President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful' spending bill, which was signed into law on July 4th. Among other things, the bill will bring an end to federal tax credits on certain EVs. Here are three ways the bill could hit Tesla investors. Tax Credits Will End Federal tax incentives played a big role in boosting Tesla's EV sales in recent years, but those incentives will soon come to an end. Because of Trump's bill, buyers have until Sept. 30 to qualify for the federal tax credits on Tesla EVs before they're terminated, CBS News reported. Before the bill passed, new EVs came with a $7,500 federal tax credit, while used EVs came with credits of up to $4,000. The idea behind the credits was to make EVs more affordable. That's important, because the average purchase price of a new EV is about $9,000 higher in the U.S. than the average new gas-powered car, according to Kelley Blue Book data cited by CBS News. Used EVs cost roughly $2,000 more than comparable gas cars, on average. An end to the tax credit will hurt Tesla — and Tesla shareholders — because it narrows the number of potential EV buyers. I Sold My Tesla: Rival EV Companies Will Get a Boost As Business Insider reported, one key provision in the new bill is that cars made by companies that sold more than 200,000 'accepted' EVs between December 31, 2009 and December 31, 2025 do not qualify for the tax credit. This provision will mainly impact Tesla, which sells a lot more cars than that in a single quarter. In contrast, rivals Rivian and Lucid have not reached the 200,000 milestone, meaning their customers can still get tax credits. This could give them an edge against Tesla, at least over the short term. Sales Could Decline Further Tesla's EV sales have already slumped badly this year. The company recently posted second-quarter car sales of 384,122 — down 13.5% from the previous year, CNN reported. It was the biggest year-over-year decline in Tesla history, and followed a similarly dismal first quarter. Trump's spending bill will likely hurt sales even further because buyers will no longer have the same tax incentives. This means they'll have to dish out more money to buy a Tesla than in the past. 'It's on Tesla to make the case for consumers to even slightly pay up today versus some other EVs,' Seth Goldstein, an equity strategist at Morningstar, told Business Insider. More From GOBankingRates 4 Housing Markets That Have Plummeted in Value Over the Past 5 Years This article originally appeared on 3 Ways Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' Could Hit Tesla Investors Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
