Real estate tax

Tax credits

A credit reduces the tax itself, dollar for dollar, which makes credits the most valuable line on the return and the most tightly guarded, each with strings that can claw the benefit back.

A deduction reduces the income you are taxed on. A credit reduces the tax itself, dollar for dollar, which makes credits the most valuable line on the return and the most tightly guarded. Real estate touches several of them, and each comes with strings that decide whether you actually keep the benefit or hand it back on audit.

These pages cover the credits an owner can reach and the conditions that govern them. The historic rehabilitation credit and its recapture period. The energy and solar credits and how the passive-activity rules limit who can use them. The conservation easement, which delivers a large deduction and draws IRS scrutiny in equal measure, the good version and the abusive version that gets people penalized. Each page names the credit, what qualifies, and the condition that quietly claws it back, because a credit you have to repay was never a credit.

Inside this hub

01

Historic tax credits

Rehabilitate a certified historic building and the federal government hands you a credit worth 20% of what you spent, a dollar-for-dollar reduction of your tax bill, not just a deduction. Add state credits on top and the government can effectively fund a third or more of a historic rehab. The rules are strict and the timing is spread over five years.

02

Energy tax credits

The energy tax credit landscape for real estate was rewritten in 2025, and mostly not in investors' favor. The residential clean energy credit is gone, the commercial building deduction is closing, and the big commercial solar credit is on an accelerated countdown. Knowing what actually survives, and the deadlines, is what matters now.

03

Solar credits

The 30% residential solar tax credit is gone, ended by the 2025 law nearly a decade early. What remains for real estate investors is the commercial solar credit on income-producing property, and even that is on a countdown. If you own rentals and were thinking about solar, the window and the rules are very different than they were a year ago.

04

Conservation easements

Donate the development rights on land with real conservation value and you can deduct the value of what you gave up, a legitimate and powerful deduction for the right landowner. But the syndicated version of this strategy became one of the most aggressively prosecuted tax shelters in the country, so the line between smart and disastrous is sharp.

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