30% of the cost of purchasing, assembling and installing qualifying equipment, for installations completed from 2022 through December 31, 2025. On a $30,000 system, that's a $9,000 credit — CRS's own worked example.
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Is the credit worth its full face value to every taxpayer?
Only up to your tax liability in a given year, because the credit is nonrefundable. In CRS's worked example, a taxpayer owing $7,000 in taxes sees liability drop to zero and carries the remaining $2,000 forward to next year — the credit's full $9,000 value is preserved, just spread across tax years rather than paid out as a refund.
Does income affect how much of the credit I can use?
This brief doesn't have a sourced income limit or phase-out for the residential credit — the constraint that's actually documented is tax liability, not income level. If you don't owe enough tax in a given year to use the full credit, carryforward is the sourced mechanism for capturing the rest, not a reduced credit amount.
Does the credit's value change based on financing?
The 30% rate applied to the cost of purchasing, assembling and installing the equipment — this brief doesn't have a sourced distinction for how financing structure (cash vs. loan) changes what qualifies as the credited cost. What is sourced, on the cost side generally, is that loan-financed systems carried a meaningfully higher price per watt in 2024 than cash purchases, which would affect the base the 30% is calculated against.
Sources
3 cited- Credit rate and worked example: Congressional Research Service, Insight IN12611, Expiration and Carryforward Rules for the Residential Clean Energy Credit, 2025-09-25 (checked 2026-08-18).
- Statutory rate and qualifying years: IRS, Residential Clean Energy Credit (checked 2026-08-18).
- Cash vs. loan pricing gap: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Distributed Solar and Storage — 2025 Data Update, October 2025 (checked 2026-08-18).