What the federal solar tax credit is worth to you in 2026

If you are buying a solar system for your own home in 2026, there is no federal residential tax credit for it any more. Section 25D ended for expenditures made after December 31 2025. A separate credit, Section 48E, is still in force, but it is a credit for whoever owns the system. On a lease or a power purchase agreement, that is the company, not you.

We are a licensed electrical contractor, not tax advisers. It is recommended that you consult with an independent tax professional about anything on this page before you rely on it.

What ended, and the words that ended it

Section 25D of the Internal Revenue Code is the one people mean when they say "the solar tax credit". It gave a household a credit worth 30 percent of the cost of qualifying clean energy property installed at their home.

Public Law 119-21, approved July 4 2025, changed one sentence of it. Section 70506 of that law amends Section 25D(h) by striking "to property placed in service after December 31, 2034" and inserting "with respect to any expenditures made after December 31, 2025".

The IRS page for the credit has caught up. It now reads: "The Residential Clean Energy Credit equals 30% of the costs of new, qualified clean energy property for your home installed anytime from 2022 through December 31, 2025," and "The credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025." That page was last reviewed on July 4 2026.

So a 2026 cash purchase, and a 2026 purchase on a loan, get nothing from Section 25D.

If your system went in around the end of 2025

The word doing the work is "expenditures", and the code defines when one happens. Section 25D(e)(8)(A) says that "an expenditure with respect to an item shall be treated as made when the original installation of the item is completed."

So the date that matters is not the day you signed, not the day you paid the deposit and not the day the panels arrived on a pallet. It is the day the original installation was finished. A system signed in October 2025 and finished in February 2026 is a 2026 expenditure on the face of the statute.

That is the general rule, not advice about your return. If your project crossed the line, take your contract, your permit final and your invoices to an independent tax professional and let them read the dates. The credit is claimed on IRS Form 5695.

The credit that is still there is not yours to claim

Section 48E is the clean electricity investment credit. It is a business credit, and the taxpayer who claims it is the one who owns the qualified facility.

Two numbers matter. The base rate is 6 percent of the qualified investment. It rises to 30 percent for a facility with a maximum net output of less than 1 megawatt in alternating current, which every rooftop system in a Las Vegas neighbourhood is by a very wide margin. That is at 26 U.S.C. 48E(a)(2)(A).

Public Law 119-21 also put an end date on it for solar. Section 70513 adds a new paragraph to Section 48E(e): the section "shall not apply to any qualified property placed in service by the taxpayer after December 31, 2027, which is part of an applicable facility", and an applicable facility includes one that uses solar energy to produce electricity. The effective date clause in the same section says that termination applies to facilities the construction of which begins after the date 12 months after enactment, and enactment was July 4 2025. July 4 2026 is therefore the line, and after it the system has to be in service by the end of 2027.

The IRS page for Section 48E has not been updated for any of this. It was last reviewed on January 5 2026 and still describes the credit as running to 2032 or later. The statute is the authority, the web page is not, and this is exactly the sort of gap a tax professional is for.

What that means for a quote with a tax credit line on it

Read the right hand column twice. The four structures are compared properly in prepaid PPA, lease, loan or cash. On a lease or a power purchase agreement the credit is real, and it is not a payment to you. If a proposal shows a credit as a line that reduces your number, ask for it in writing as part of the price rather than as a promise about your tax return.

Homeowners here have long described this as surrendering the credit to the company. That was an accurate description of the trade. What changed in 2026 is the other side of it: the cash buyer who used to get the credit now does not.

Nevada's own side of the ledger

There is no state income tax credit, because there is no state income tax. The Nevada Constitution, article 10, section 1, subsection 9, says "No income tax shall be levied upon the wages or personal income of natural persons." Nothing to credit against means no credit.

Property assessment. NRS 701A.200 treats a qualified system as exempt from taxation for the purposes of property assessment under chapter 361 of NRS. The definition of a qualified system in that section covers equipment installed in or next to a building to provide electricity used in the building using energy from solar devices, whether or not the owner takes part in net metering, and it is subject to standards set by regulation of the Nevada Tax Commission. This is not money paid to you and it is not a credit. How it applies to your parcel is a question for the Clark County Assessor and for your own tax professional.

Sales tax. Nevada's renewable energy sales and use tax abatement lives in NRS 701A.300 to 701A.390. It is applied for through the Director in consultation with the Office of Economic Development, it is written for a facility that generates or stores energy, and in a county with a population of 100,000 or more it requires a capital investment of at least $10,000,000 and 75 or more people working on construction in the second quarter of the build. A household buying panels does not meet it. Pages that say Nevada exempts solar equipment from sales tax are describing a different thing.

The NV Energy battery rebate is closed. NV Energy's own energy storage page states that incentive applications were no longer accepted after June 30 2023 at 11:59 pm, and that applications not submitted by that time would not receive incentive funding.

What to check in the paperwork

Nevada rewrote its solar sales rules in 2025 and the new sections are useful to you.

• NRS 598.982186 requires any commercial communication that talks about an incentive, rebate or tax credit for a solar system to say that it is recommended you consult with an independent tax professional. The same section makes it a prohibited practice to state or imply that the seller takes part in a public incentive scheme run by a government agency unless that agency has authorised the claim in writing. If somebody on your doorstep implies they are with a state or utility scheme, that is the rule they are breaking, and the no cost solar pitch, taken apart covers the rest of it.
• NRS 598.9811 for a lease and NRS 598.9817 for a power purchase agreement both require the agreement to contain a description of the ownership of any tax credits, tax rebates, tax incentives or portfolio energy credits connected with the system. Find that clause and read it before you sign. It is the clause that tells you who the 48E credit belongs to.
• NRS 598.9821 requires an express written warranty for the installation and for the roof penetrations, expiring no earlier than 10 years after installation. The full list of what Nevada puts in your favour is in your rights when you sign a solar contract in Nevada.

The short version

For a 2026 purchase you own, price the system on its own merits: what it costs, what it produces, what your bill is now, and whether the payback still works without a credit. There is no federal credit coming to rescue the number. For a lease or a power purchase agreement, the credit exists but it belongs to the owner, so judge the offer on the payment schedule, the escalator and the term, and nothing else.

One practical consequence worth naming. Until the end of 2025, a quote could hide a high price behind a credit, because a number with 30 percent taken off it looks reasonable even when the price per watt does not. That cover is gone for a purchase you own, so the price per watt and the price per annual kilowatt hour are now the whole comparison. Ask every company for both, in writing, on the same page as the production estimate. What solar costs in Las Vegas in 2026 gives you the published market figures to hold a quote against, and how to compare two solar quotes shows the arithmetic.

Then take whatever you are considering to an independent tax professional. That is the only advice on this page we are qualified to give twice.

We recheck this page quarterly. Last checked 2026-09-19. If a number here has moved, tell us and we will fix it the same week.