Did I read this right!? (regarding $7500 Federal Credit)

[MrClown]

And as a general recommendation to strangers, if you can afford a Tesla, you should afford an accountant.

For some of us it may be quite a stretch to afford the Tesla, to the point that we don't have $ left for an accountant. Out of curiosity, do you find that the accountant gets you a significantly better refund than TurboTax after factoring in their fees? Do you also run TurboTax in a given year to compare to what the accountant does, apples to apples?

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I won't be getting the credit until next year's taxes but I'm going to play with it in TurboTax this year to make sure it'll work out as planned, just in case. Hopefully as others have said TT and the gov have sorted it all out by now.

 

[mejojo]

Regarding rolling....I am having a Solar City system installed this year and they told me the Solar credit can roll...not that it will matter so long as I keep working....

 

[CmdrThor]

The whole thing got me off Turbotax for good. And as a general recommendation to strangers, if you can afford a Tesla, you should afford an accountant. I learned my lesson (and it was far more than just the EV credit issue). No one should be getting advice on a forum over something involving the government and $7500 - although all the advice here is correct to my knowledge.

To each his own. After reading some of the claims people have said their accountants' have made on here and other forums, they aren't always going to do better than a savvy individual. I prefer to understand my taxes and don't feel it necessary to waste money on an accountant.

 

[nigel25]

As someone who just put down a deposit for an X, I just wanted to say thanks for clearing up a common misconception about the tax credit. Also, first post! Yah!

 

[breser]

The whole thing got me off Turbotax for good. And as a general recommendation to strangers, if you can afford a Tesla, you should afford an accountant. I learned my lesson (and it was far more than just the EV credit issue). No one should be getting advice on a forum over something involving the government and $7500 - although all the advice here is correct to my knowledge.

If you're using Turbotax to mean any software preparation I think this is an incredibly short sighted view point. The fundamental idea here is that an accountant doing the preparation of your tax returns is fundamentally better than the software. As others have pointed out accountants make mistakes too. But I'm going to share a somewhat open secret. Your accountant is not hand preparing your tax returns either. They have assistants (or junior accountants) type in the numbers into software and spit out the returns. Either way you prepare your return it's possible to run into an error made in some software. In the end paying an accountant to prepare your return is paying someone to hide the fact that a computer did the calculations from you.

I find this idea rather strange on this forum. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone on this forum that would prefer that their Tesla was hand made rather than being made by robots. Sure the robots can do a poor job. But you can also have a robot doing welding that was programmed with the aid of a top notch welder that ends up welding as good as that welder. If you used humans to do that welding work you'd have to find enough top notch welders to do all the welding work that needed to be done. You couldn't just have enough to do the welding either, but you'd need more because humans take vacations, get sick, etc... Even the top notch welder sometimes gets tired or does a poor job on a specific case. However, the robot repeats the weld the same time every time for the most part. I see the tax preparation software in much the same way.

Much like the robots in the factory the tax preparation software can't do everything. Fortunately the tax software lets you override it and file whatever you want (at least Turbotax lets you change any field on any form). There is of course nothing stopping anyone from getting advice from an accountant before preparing a return with software or having an accountant review such a return. If you have unusual tax situations that is even be a good idea. The tax credit for EVs probably qualified as an unusual tax situation in the past, I'm not so sure how true that is today given the number of LEAFs that have been sold.

 

[smartypnz]

We get this discussion each year. The AMT problem that thwarted deductions was for 'Charger Installation'. No effect for the $7500 credit.

 

[eco5280]

I'm struggling with this myself right now - I own a small business and want to make sure I have enough income tax on the books to get the $7500 credit. It's tough because I have no idea what my company will bring in this year, so I may have to up my payroll to stupid levels and take a small distribution which will cost more in payroll taxes but ensure I get the credit. Hard to plan ahead for this stuff in my situation.

 

[neroden]

Mmm. I do my taxes myself. What I had to do was to sell some stocks where I was sitting on capital gains in order to make sure I generated enough taxable income the year I bought the car. And then bought them back. (Most of my income is from capital gains, which is very variable year over year, and I didn't have any stocks I actually wanted to sell that year.)

eco5290: if you can, keep a close eye on your realized net income during the year, and pay yourself a large bonus in December which is just enough to generate the right amount of tax.

 

[CHGolferJim]

Roth Conversion!

 

[eco5280]

Mmm. I do my taxes myself. What I had to do was to sell some stocks where I was sitting on capital gains in order to make sure I generated enough taxable income the year I bought the car. And then bought them back. (Most of my income is from capital gains, which is very variable year over year, and I didn't have any stocks I actually wanted to sell that year.)

Talk to me 6-12 months ago and I had stocks with GAINS that I could do the same with. Sigh. I'm sitting at a loss on almost everything I have in my portfolio.

eco5290: if you can, keep a close eye on your realized net income during the year, and pay yourself a large bonus in December which is just enough to generate the right amount of tax.

Thanks - that sounds like a great idea, thank you. If all goes well, my stocks go up and I sell those and voila! But I'm a realist. The quickest way for a stock to tank is for me to buy it.