Solar Tax Credit Calculator 2026: What’s Actually Still Available

The 30% federal solar tax credit most homeowners expect is gone if you own your system outright and installed it after December 31, 2025. The Residential Clean Energy Credit (Section 25D) was repealed early by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 2025 — about seven years ahead of its original 2032 phase-out schedule. If you’re seeing “30% through 2032” on a solar site right now, that page hasn’t been updated.

Here’s what still applies, and what to do about it.

The two credits, and why the difference matters

There are actually two separate federal solar credits, and only one survived:

• Section 25D (Residential Clean Energy Credit) — claimed by homeowners who buy or finance a system outright. Ended for systems placed in service after December 31, 2025.
• Section 48E (Investment Tax Credit for businesses) — claimed by the company that owns the system, available through the end of 2027 for third-party-ownership deals like solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs).

That second point is the workaround worth understanding: if you lease your solar system or sign a PPA instead of buying it outright, the leasing company can still claim 48E and typically passes some of that value to you through a lower rate. Buy the system yourself in 2026, and there’s no federal credit at all — the tax benefit only flows through if a third party technically owns the equipment.

Calculate your real 2026 numbers

[CALCULATOR EMBED: solar cost input, state selector → outputs federal credit ($0 for owned systems, note on lease/PPA path), state credit if available, net cost, and payback period]

What still reduces your cost in 2026

With the federal owner credit gone, the math now depends almost entirely on where you live:

• State tax credits and rebates — a shrinking number of states still offer their own credit on top of net metering; check your state’s page below.
• Net metering policy — how much your utility pays you for excess power varies enormously and now matters more than the old federal credit did.
• Going the lease/PPA route — trades a smaller ongoing bill reduction for access to the still-active 48E credit, without the upfront cost.
• Battery storage — batteries charged exclusively by solar can still qualify under 48E if third-party owned; owned batteries follow the same 25D expiration as panels.

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Should you still go solar in 2026?

The math changed, but it isn’t dead. For an $8 kW system costing roughly $24,000, losing the 30% federal credit removes about $7,200 of value that a 2025 buyer would have gotten. That’s a real number — it typically adds one to three years to your payback period, depending on your state’s incentives and electricity rates. It doesn’t erase the case for solar in high-electricity-cost states with strong net metering; it does erase the case in states where the federal credit was doing most of the work.

Bottom line: get a quote before you assume the numbers from a 2024 or 2025 article still apply, and ask any installer directly whether their pricing already reflects the 25D repeal — some are still quoting old math.

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