The federal window tax credit has ended

What changed, and when

The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit — Section 25C of the tax code — let a homeowner claim 30% of what qualifying windows and skylights cost, up to $600 in a year, inside a $1,200 annual cap for the building envelope as a whole. The law signed on 4 July 2025 moved its end date forward, and the credit closed on 31 December 2025.

Windows installed during 2025 are still claimable. The claim goes on the return for the 2025 tax year, the one filed in 2026, and it needs the manufacturer's certification statement along with the invoice. Keep both.

Windows installed in 2026 have no federal credit. Not a smaller one, not a different one — none. Any page telling you otherwise was written before January and has not been touched since.

What did not replace it

The federal rebate programmes funded in 2022 are often described as the successor, and for windows they are not. The Home Efficiency Rebates and the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates are run state by state, and the appliance programme's list is insulation, air sealing, ventilation, wiring, service panels, heat pumps, water heaters, stoves and dryers. Windows are not on it.

The other programme pays for measured or modelled whole-house energy savings rather than for particular equipment. New windows can count towards that saving as part of a larger project, but they are not a line item you claim on their own, and the programme has not launched in every state.

The figure of $1,600 turns up on a lot of window pages. It is the cap for insulation and air sealing under the appliance programme, and it has never applied to windows.

What is actually left

State and utility programmes, and they differ enormously. A utility in one state pays a fixed amount per window that meets a given U-factor; the next state over has nothing. These change with budget years rather than with tax law, so the only current answer comes from your own utility and your state energy office.

What has not changed is the part that was always worth more than the credit: a window that suits the climate where the house stands. The numbers that decide that are printed on the label, and they are different in Minnesota and in Florida.