Has anyone looked into the IRS tax credit for solar panels? The IRS material says

quote:

Qualified solar electric property costs. Qualified solar electric property costs are costs for property that uses solar energy to generate electricity for use in a home located in the United States and used as your home. This includes costs relating to a solar panel or other property installed as a roof or a portion of a roof. The home does not have to be your main home.

One would use Form 5695 to claim the energy credit. Looks like the maximum credit is $300.

I believe the credit is 30% of the cost of the system, up to $2000. This is a link to a PDF that explains it.

There are other tax breaks as well. For example, you don't pay state sales tax in some states and in some states the rate is far lower than normal.

Hi, Roger:

Thanks for the info...that is very good news for us since we just installed solar panels. I read carefully through the entire IRS publication and it looks like the maximum credit is $2000, not $300.

Your solar costs go in line 13, then you multiply them by 30% and enter up to $2000. So, if you spent $6600 on your solar (admittedly, a lot!) you could claim a $2000 credit.

IRS form 5695 and its instructions can be found HERE.

(Oh, drat, I just realized that we did our solar panels in January '07, not '06, so we'll have to wait a year to claim this deduction. Oh well.)

RIF, you beat me to it

We installed our solar panels in dec 06, can we claim on this years taxes

2001 beaver patriot towing a blazer

This is a tax credit not a deduction. That means it comes off what you pay in taxes. If you are in the 15% tax bracket, that means the credit is like 6 times the value of a deduction.

The credits are for solar installations from 1/1/2006 through 12/31/2007 on you home. As full-timers, our trailer is our home. Even for non full-timers, I would say if your RV qualifies as secondary housing, the solar tax credit applies.

The effect for us was we were going to install two 100 watts panels with controller, hardware, and wiring. The Tax Credit allowed us to get two more panels for effectively free.

And we do contribute to reduction of electrical power. On normal sun days, out inverter doesn't have to put any DC into the trailer as the solar panels provide the DC.

quote:

Originally posted by Mark & Dale Bruss:


The credits are for solar installations from 1/1/2006 through 12/31/2007 on you home. As full-timers, our trailer is our home. Even for non full-timers, I would say if your RV qualifies as secondary housing, the solar tax credit applies.

I wonder how the IRS knows where you install the panels. Do they need receipts from a professional installer? What about us do-it-yourselfers?

Nothing on the form refers to an installer.

Quote "You may be able to take these credits if you made energy saving improvements to your home located in the United States in 2006. For credit purposes, costs are treated as being paid when the original installation of the item is completed,".

Is this credit *really* available for RVs?

According to the instruction for Form 5695 to which Odyssey gave the URL, the definition of "Home" is:

A home is one that you lived in during 2006 and includes a house, houseboat, mobile home, cooperative apartment, condominium, and a manufactured home that conforms to Federal Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards

Compare the above definition of "Home" to the definition in Publication 936, Home Mortgage Interest Deduction:

A Qualified Home ... includes a house, condominium, cooperative, mobile home, house trailer, boat, or similar property that has sleeping, cooking, and toilet facilities.

The second definition clearly includes RVs...I'm not so sure the first definition, for the purposes of the solar credit, does.

When we took pour solar deduction we were clearly told that the unit the solar was put on could not be self propelled, which ment that all types of trailers are included but motor homes were problematic and probably excluded

Good eye, LindaH. It may be that RVs are not included. I will look at the 2007 text and see if it is different next year.

Updating Mark Bruss's information. The credit is now available for installations through 12/31/2008.

http://dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Inc...ntpageid=1&ee=1&re=1

Dan

I'm with LindaH on this one. From looking at Pub 936, clearly the IRS knows how to define "home" to include RVs. The fact that they did not do so with respect to the solar credit would make me very wary of claiming the credit for installation on an RV.

I also see no way to read the solar credit definition of "home" to include trailers but not motorhomes. Look at this section: "mobile home, house trailer, boat." Obviously a boat isn't a mobile home, which is why it's in there specifically as "boat." The same logic would apply to "house trailer." They put it in there because the term "mobile home" doesn't cover it, and "mobile home" is the term used in the instructions on solar credit.

Then again, these are tax returns we're talking about, and you can do just about anything you want on them and get away with it as long as you don't get audited.

quote:

Blues:make me very wary of claiming the credit for installation on an RV.

I took the solar credit on my fulltime 5er for 2006. I have 3 panels, but only bought 1 in the qualifying time frame. I did it using Turbo Tax online, so I didn't have to mess with no stinking forms. The IRS loves it when you don't send them paper.

I advise everyone to quit the paper, especially you fulltimers. You can do your taxes from anywhere, you don't have to 'go home' to do them.

It is interesting how the IRS expands the language of the House Bill that authorises things. Here is the item on household solar from House Bill H.R.6, 2005, Subtitle C - Conservation and Energy Efficiency Provisions, Section 1335 - Credit for Residential Energy Efficiency Property, Sec 25D - Residential Energy Efficiency Property, (d) - Definitions - For Purposes of this section,

quote:

`(2) QUALIFIED PHOTOVOLTAIC PROPERTY EXPENDITURE- The term `qualified photovoltaic property expenditure' means an expenditure for property which uses solar energy to generate electricity for use in a dwelling unit located in the United States and used as a residence by the taxpayer.

Pretty straight forward to me, "used as a residence by the taxpayer."

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