Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Recovery of solar tax credits by homeowners' association

[R.P. Aditya (aditya]

Hi David,

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 11:05:36AM -0400, David Heimann wrote:
>       So here's the question:  Has any community on this list obtained 
> solar panels?  If so, how did they handle the tax credits?  (We have been 
> thinking about forming a private fund where some households can donate to 
> the households with no tax credits, so has anyone addressed that
> question?)

We are in the process of installing 20kw of Solar panels for our Common
House and we expect to take advantage of our tax credit to reduce our
tax burden. Although we are a non-profit, we pay federal income tax on
non-exempt income -- that is, any income that doesn't come in via
association fees (we rent offices, get guest room usage fees, CH room
usage donations etc. that comes out to several thousand a year, and that
is taxed at 30%). So we're hoping the tax credit will offset those taxes
over a few years.

We also have households installing PV on their own units as part of the
same project, and they will individually take advantage of the tax
credit, so we will not do the pass-through.

I know our neighbor community, Sunward, installed a PV array on their
common house two or so years ago, so if there is someone from Sunward on
this list, they might be able to tell you how they are managing the tax
credit.

Hope that helps.

-- 
Adi
Great Oak Cohousing
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
http://www.gocoho.org