Did you dawdle on that new heat pump or EV? Better move fast to get those tax credits

Tax incentives that saved U.S. residents thousands of dollars on home efficiency upgrades, clean energy installations and electric vehicles are expiring this year. That means people who want to take advantage of them before they disappear have to act quickly.

“There is still time, but the clock is ticking,” said Zach Pierce, head of policy at Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on electrification.

With thousands of dollars on the line and mere days or months to claim them, we've got some tips on how to maximize savings.

The Inflation Reduction Act that passed in 2022 includes a slew of tax credits for electric vehicles and home efficiency upgrades.

The credits had two main goals: to help people afford cleaner alternatives like heat pumps and electric vehicles that can save them money, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are the largest driver of climate change.

In addition to EVs, home upgrades that qualify include home energy audits, heat pumps, solar panels, water heaters, appliances, battery storage, car chargers and improvements to windows, doors, skylights, insulation and electrical panels.

Payback comes at tax filing time. For example, if you buy a heat pump and qualify for a $2,000 tax credit, you document that expense on your tax return, and you owe $2,000 less in taxes that year.

Some incentives have a cap. You can only get $1,200 of credit per year for most of the home improvements like insulation and efficient windows, and $2,000 of credit for heat pumps and water heaters. The big expenses, including geothermal heat pumps, rooftop solar and battery storage, aren't capped. Those tax credits are 30% of the purchase price. So a new $20,000 rooftop solar system earns you a $6,000 tax credit.

Most of these credits were originally set to expire between 2032 and 2034. But the budget passed by Congress this year ends them far sooner.

Most of them expire at the end of this year. But there are some exceptions.

The clean vehicle tax credit worth $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for used ones expires Sept. 30.

Pierce said with a deadline that tight, people shopping for a new vehicle that qualifies should get on that “as soon as you hear this message.”

Olivia Alves, senior associate with the nonprofit clean energy advocacy group RMI, said it's also the one IRA credit you can typically get upfront. “You use the clean vehicle tax credit, you can work with your dealership to get that money off the day that you make the purchase. So it operates like a point of sale rebate,” she said.

The car doesn't need to be parked in your driveway by the deadline. A buyer simply needs to enter into a contract and make a down payment or trade-in to qualify.

The credit for EV chargers, which is up to $1,000 for qualifying residents, is good through June 30 of next year. Everything else expires on Dec. 31.

Start with the home energy assessment, Alves said.

“That is really the bread and butter for a lot of these types of retrofits,” she said. “Those are done by professionals that can help you map out what those projects would look like.”

Pierce said after that, if solar panels are in the game plan, tackle that next. But some solar installers are already booked through the end of the year.

“We are seeing more bottlenecks for rooftop solar installations than we are for heat pumps, for example, but that doesn’t mean that it may not be an option for your region or your neighborhood,” Pierce said.

“Experts estimate that takes 16 to 90 days to get a solar panels system installed, and that’s quick,” said Kate Ashford, investing specialist with the personal finance company NerdWallet. “You might be a little late, but you could look into it to see if it’s even possible.”

Alves said next, tackle smaller installations like doors and insulation. Her final tier is major appliances like heat pumps, which are more expensive and can take longer, but may not face the same backlog as solar installations.

OK, let's say you qualified for tax credits on a home efficiency improvement and the amount exceeded the tax you owed. You weren't allowed to carry that unused credit forward into a future year anyway.

But credits for residential clean energy projects — think really big-ticket items like solar, geothermal heat pumps and battery storage — could be carried forward if you didn't get the full benefit of the incentive on your tax return.

Rewiring America said it's not clear if that will continue given the accelerated expiration dates, and recommended consumers check with their tax adviser.

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FILE - Theodore Tanczuk, left, and Brayan Santos, right, of solar installer YellowLite, put panels on the roof of a home in Lakewood, Ohio, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

FILE - Janelle Lowe prepares to charge her electric vehicle at a station May 22, 2025, in Long Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention.

Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.

“Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state,” the country’s representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.

African nation Gambia brought a case at the court in 2019 alleging that Myanmar's military actions amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention that was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

Some 1.2 million members of the Rohingya minority are still languishing in chaotic, overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, where armed groups recruit children and girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution. The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and have caused children to starve to death.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.

As hearings opened Monday, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said his nation filed the case after the Rohingya “endured decades of appalling persecution, and years of dehumanizing propaganda. This culminated in the savage, genocidal ‘clearance operations’ of 2016 and 2017, which were followed by continued genocidal policies meant to erase their existence in Myanmar.”

Hlaing disputed the evidence Gambia cited in its case, including the findings of an international fact-finding mission set up by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.

“Myanmar’s position is that the Gambia has failed to meet its burden of proof," he said. "This case will be decided on the basis of proven facts, not unsubstantiated allegations. Emotional anguish and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for rigorous presentation of facts.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi represented her country at jurisdiction hearings in the case in 2019, denying that Myanmar armed forces committed genocide and instead casting the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she led as an unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.

The pro-democracy icon is now in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges after a military takeover of power.

Myanmar contested the court’s jurisdiction, saying Gambia was not directly involved in the conflict and therefore could not initiate a case. Both countries are signatories to the genocide convention, and in 2022, judges rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.

Gambia rejects Myanmar's claims that it was combating terrorism, with Jallow telling judges on Monday that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from Myanmar’s pattern of conduct.”

In late 2024, prosecutors at another Hague-based tribunal, the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power from Suu Kyi in 2021, is accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Rohingya. The request is still pending.

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2017, file photo, smoke rises from a burned house in Gawdu Zara village, northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya lived, Myanmar. (AP Photo, File)