solar credit, can you claim multiple times with upgrades?

[Ampster]

Another grey area involves what value to use for the ITC, if one receives an SGIP rebate. The rebate does not usually fall in the same year as the installation.

I think Congress has a lot more important things to do than clarify an issue that may affect a small percentage of the population. Judgeing from the responses to this question, even the majority of the people in that small percentage have managed to find clarity on this issue. There are bigger issues facing this country.

[arf88]

Good points

I'm more curious than anything. I already filed a second time for my batteries prior, after my solar install. Just curious what the official rules are on this and it seems to be more in the gray area as far as the IRS goes.

"Congress wrote the law, the issue is whether the IRS has, or should, write a regulation to cover this situation that is not described in the law."

[bob-n]

To make things even more complicated, different IRS auditors sometimes do interpret the tax code differently.

My advice, for what it's worth:
Don't expand if the justification relies on getting federal tax credit.
When you expand, claim credit on your taxes.
Have enough in savings so that if you get audited and disallowed, you aren't badly hurt.

The odds of getting audited are small. The odds of getting disallowed are even smaller. Just don't bet your next-of-kin that it is a sure thing, even if 50 people tell you that it is.

According to: https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/tax-...udit-red-flags
"The IRS audited only 0.4% of all individual tax returns in 2019...Plus, the IRS audit rate is expected to drop even lower for 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic."

"The overall individual audit rate may only be about one in 250 returns, but the odds increase as your income goes up (especially if you have business income). IRS statistics for 2019 show that individuals with incomes between $200,000 and $1 million had up to a 1% audit rate (one out of every 100 returns examined). And 2.4% of individual returns reporting incomes of $1 million or more were audited in 2019."

[arf88]

I think most people have, but have not been audited by the IRS which is a good thing

[PVAndy]

Dave, valid points and I agree.

I've taken it 3 times when I enlarged and added storage

[arf88]

Dave, valid points and I agree.

[azdave]

I've found multiple cases where either expanding an existing PV system or replacing an existing PV system has been deemed "allowable" as an ITC by those claiming to be in the know. At the end of the day, you can claim whatever you want on your taxes and not worry about it until it is disallowed or you get audited. Claiming you were given bad tax advise will not get you out of paying back a disallowed tax credit (with penalties) if the IRS determines you were not eligible to claim it.

Seems to me that expanding a system should qualify as that is increasing the total energy the system creates and the ITC intention was to increase solar generation, right? The question of claiming a tax credit for replacing a system is a bit fuzzy in my opinion since that is not really adding extra solar capacity as much as "repairing" the installed capacity that was already given a tax credit previously.

[Ampster]

Mixed response is from CPA's you gave you opinion, now move on.

I'm not in disagreement, but as I stated on TMC, our opinion is just that, what the IRS thinks may be different.

I do like the emoticons on this forum. I agee with your sentiment.

[arf88]

Mixed response is from CPA's you gave you opinion, now move on.

I'm not in disagreement, but as I stated on TMC, our opinion is just that, what the IRS thinks may be different.

[Ampster]

Mixed responses? Yes, proportional to how many times the question is answered. At least my answer is consistent from one forum to the next but I am just an anonymous poster on the Internet.

[arf88]

So I just got a call back from one of the CPA he was very clear and stated that you can only get the credit one time for one address.

again it's his opinion he's one CPA It seems to be a mixed response so far

[arf88]

Oh it's you from TMC.

[Ampster]

It is also important to distinguish between advice about the Federal tax credit and various state or local incentives.
As I mentioned on another forum, nothing has changed my opinion or comfort with my decision to take the ITC on multiple expenditures during the past six years..

[arf88]

Here is another article

https://news.energysage.com/adding-solar-panels-to-an-existing-system-what-you-need-to-know/#:~:text=If%20you're%20adding%20additional,property%2C%20or%20once%20per%20person

Incentives

If you’re adding additional panels onto your system, you may not be eligible for some of the same incentives (such as tax credits and rebates) that you claimed when you originally installed your system. Many incentives are only allowed to be claimed once per property, or once per person.

[arf88]

The question is really can you claim itc credit multiple times for the same home after initiall installation.