The Tax Incentives Assistance Project (TIAP), sponsored by a coalition of public interest nonprofit groups, government agencies, and other organizations in the energy efficiency field, is designed to give consumers and businesses information they need to make use of the federal income tax incentives for energy efficient products and technologies passed by Congress as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and subsequently amended several times.
Update as of 1/2/13:
Several tax incentives were extended and changed through the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, also known as the “fiscal cliff bill,” which passed Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. The residential tax incentives for existing homes, including purchases made in 2012, were extended through 2013. These incentives include the following measures:
- Windows, insulation, air sealing homes and duct sealing;
- Air conditioners, heat pumps, furnaces and water heaters.
There were also two incentives that were both extend and changed. The new homes credit provides an incentive to builders for new homes that reduce energy use relative to the IECC-2006 building code by at least 50%. This is a change from prior law that used the IECC-2003 as a base. The appliance credit provides an incentive to manufacturers for increased production of very-efficient refrigerators, clothes washers and dishwashers. These credits had several efficiency tiers in 2011; for 2012-2013, the higher tiers remain but the lowest (least efficient) tiers for clothes washers and dishwashers ended.
These other five incentives remain in place and unchanged from the prior law:
- New and retrofitted commercial buildings that use half the energy of a building built to model codes, scheduled to extend until 12/31/13
- Plug-in electric drive vehicles scheduled to extend until 12/31/16
- Combined heat and power systems scheduled to extend until 12/31/16
- On-site renewable energy systems including ground-source heat pumps, scheduled to extend until 12/31/16
- Fuel cells and microturbines scheduled to extend until 12/31/16
Also, Congress has begun to consider what to do with these tax credits as part of tax reform. No decisions are likely until the end of the year, but at a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing a variety of proposals were discussed.
We wanted to make this update to the homepage now and will continue to update individual topic pages in the upcoming week.
IRS Forms
- Residential Energy Efficient Property: Form 5695
- New Homes: Form 8908
- Vehicle Incentives: Form 8910
- Commercial Solar Incentives: Form 3468 (Investment Credit)
Note: The links above go to the IRS web site. TIAP makes every effort to keep these links up to date. IRS often does not publish new versions of forms until the beginning of the following tax year.
Additional Resources
Some additional information on tax incentives can be found HERE!
Extension Service Home Energy Community of Practice Webinar - Presentation by Jen Amann, ACEEE (4/10/2009)
Overview of Federal Energy Efficiency Tax Incentives passed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009
*Updated matrix of energy efficiency incentives
RESNET has completed a survey of rating providers regarding the number of homes that their raters certified for the federal tax credit (2007 only). 23,702 homes were certified by RESNET during 2007, which is triple the number of homes certified in 2006. For more information, click here.
NREL Energy Savings Modeling and Inspection Guidelines for Commercial Building Federal Tax Deductions (1.9 MB PDF)
