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

[R.P. Aditya (aditya]

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 03:24:29PM -0400, Jim Snyder-Grant wrote:
> Are you structured as a condo? Our tax accountant said the 30% federal
> credit was only available for households, and had to be passed through.
> (same for the state, but your state is different, so I don't want to
> comment on it).

We are a HOA which is a corporation in MI that pays no state
tax. However we do pay Federal tax on non-exempt income (basically
anything that isn't from association fees).

The 30% federal credit is available for businesses installing PV,
however it is not a refundable credit, meaning you have to count it
against a tax burden -- so if you have no non-exempt income as a HOA,
then you can't use the credit.

I believe this is the credit with the forms for 2012 linked:

  http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=US02F

and it is based on line 12b of Part III on form 3468 that we are going
to claim the 30% credit.

Adi

> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 11:18 AM, R.P. Aditya <aditya [at] grot.org> wrote:
> 
> >
> > 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
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> > http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
> >
> >
> >
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-- 
Adi
Great Oak Cohousing
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
http://www.gocoho.org