Form 8908 Energy Efficient Home Credit: Eligibility, Filing, and the 2026 Cutoff

To claim the Section 45L Energy Efficient Home Credit, you fill out Form 8908 by counting each qualifying home you sold or leased during the tax year, placing each unit on the single line that matches its home type, energy certification, and (for multifamily) prevailing wage status, multiplying by the per-unit amount printed on that line, and adding the results. The total moves to Form 3800 and travels with your income tax return. Use the December 2025 revision of the form, which has six line pairs corresponding to the six credit tiers.¹

Confirm You Are the Eligible Contractor

Before entering any numbers, make sure you can claim the credit at all. The eligible contractor is the person or business that constructed the qualifying home, owned it, and had a tax basis in the property during construction. For manufactured homes, the eligible contractor is the producer.² Substantial reconstruction and rehabilitation count as construction, so a gut rehab to energy-efficient standards can qualify.

If you hired a general contractor or subcontractors to do the physical work, you are the eligible contractor, not them. Ownership and financial risk during construction are what matter. And the home must be acquired by someone else for use as a residence. If you built it and kept it for yourself, or if it was still in inventory at year-end, no credit.³

Match Each Home to the Right Line

Form 8908 sorts qualifying homes into six tiers. Every unit belongs on exactly one line, based on its highest achieved certification and, for multifamily, whether prevailing wage and apprenticeship rules were met.² Sort your list before you start typing.

Single-family and manufactured homes don’t need prevailing wage compliance. They take one of two amounts:

$2,500 per home when certified under the ENERGY STAR Residential New Construction Program or ENERGY STAR Manufactured New Homes Program, without DOE Efficient New Homes certification.
$5,000 per home when it meets ENERGY STAR and is also certified under the DOE Efficient New Homes program (formerly Zero Energy Ready Home).

Multifamily units eligible for the ENERGY STAR Multifamily New Construction (MFNC) Program start lower, and prevailing wage plus apprenticeship compliance multiplies the credit by five:⁴

$500 per unit for ENERGY STAR MFNC certified, no DOE certification, no prevailing wage.
$1,000 per unit for DOE Efficient New Homes certified, no prevailing wage.
$2,500 per unit for ENERGY STAR MFNC certified with prevailing wage and apprenticeship met.
$5,000 per unit for DOE Efficient New Homes certified with prevailing wage and apprenticeship met.

Prevailing wage compliance means paying workers at least the Department of Labor rate for the area and type of work, and having qualified apprentices from a registered program perform at least 15 percent of total construction labor hours.⁵ If your project didn’t meet those requirements, use the $500 or $1,000 line, not the $2,500 or $5,000 line.

Fill In the Form Line by Line

On the December 2025 revision, each of the six tiers has a paired “a” and “b” line. Enter the number of qualifying units on the “a” line, then multiply by the dollar amount printed there and enter the product on the “b” line.⁶ Download the current version before filing; earlier revisions had fewer lines and different layouts.⁷

Lines 1a–1b: single-family or manufactured, ENERGY STAR only. Count × $2,500.
Lines 2a–2b: single-family or manufactured, ENERGY STAR plus DOE Efficient New Homes. Count × $5,000.
Lines 3a–3b: multifamily, ENERGY STAR MFNC, prevailing wage met, no DOE certification. Count × $2,500.
Lines 4a–4b: multifamily, DOE Efficient New Homes certified, prevailing wage met. Count × $5,000.
Lines 5a–5b: multifamily, ENERGY STAR MFNC, no prevailing wage, no DOE certification. Count × $500.
Lines 6a–6b: multifamily, DOE Efficient New Homes certified, no prevailing wage. Count × $1,000.

Then add the six “b” amounts together for your total credit.

Count only homes actually sold or leased to another person for use as a residence during the tax year. A finished house sitting in inventory at year-end doesn’t count until someone acquires it. And don’t put the same unit on two lines. A home that qualifies for a higher tier goes only on that higher-tier line. Putting a DOE Efficient New Home on both line 1 and line 2 is one of the more common errors on this form.

Move the Total to Form 3800 and File

The Section 45L credit is part of the general business credit. Once you have your total from Form 8908, carry it to Form 3800 (General Business Credit), which consolidates all business credits against your income tax.⁷ Both forms attach to your income tax return: Form 1120 for corporations, Form 1065 for partnerships (which pass the credit through to partners), or Form 1040 with Schedule C for sole proprietors.

The credit is nonrefundable. It can zero out your tax but won’t produce a refund on its own. If your credit exceeds the Section 38 general business credit limit for the year, the unused portion doesn’t vanish. You can carry it back one year or forward up to 20 years.⁸

Electronic filing through authorized tax software is faster, with processing usually within a few weeks. Paper returns go to your regional IRS service center and can take several months.

Keep Your Certification Records

Every qualifying home must be certified by an unrelated third party as meeting the applicable ENERGY STAR program requirements or the DOE Efficient New Homes program requirements.⁴ HERS raters accredited through RESNET are recognized for both programs. For single-family homes acquired in 2025 and the first half of 2026, the applicable ENERGY STAR version is the Single-Family New Homes National Program version 3.2.⁹

Hold onto the certifier’s report, the specific program version the home was certified against, blower door and duct leakage results, and the energy modeling software and version used. For multifamily projects claiming the increased credit, keep prevailing wage records and apprenticeship hour logs too. The IRS can request any of this on audit, and without it the credit does not survive.

The June 30, 2026 Cutoff

The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed July 4, 2025, moved the Section 45L termination date forward. No credit is allowed for homes acquired after June 30, 2026.¹⁰ “Acquired” means sold or leased to another person for use as a residence, not completed, not permitted, not listed. A home finished in May 2026 but not closed until August 2026 wouldn’t qualify. Homes acquired in the first half of 2026 are claimed on the return for that year, filed in 2027.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Form 8908 (Rev. December 2025)
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 45L – New Energy Efficient Home Credit
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ENERGY STAR. Section 45L Tax Credit Frequently Asked Questions
4
Department of Energy. Section 45L Tax Credits for DOE Efficient New Homes
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Internal Revenue Service. Frequently Asked Questions About the Prevailing Wage and Apprenticeship Under the Inflation Reduction Act
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8908 (Rev. December 2025)
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Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8908, Energy Efficient Home Credit
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 39 – Carryback and Carryforward of Unused Credits
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ENERGY STAR. 45L Tax Credit for Home Builders
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Internal Revenue Service. FAQs for Modification of Sections 25C, 25D, 25E, 30C, 30D, 45L, 45W, and 179D Under Public Law 119-21