Tax Credit Table

That's the IRS site, which is okay but the EPA site is easier to see all of them at a glance. It also has a button you can click to filter just plug-in hybrids

Federal Tax Credits for All-Electric and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles

 

This video is fairly decent about how one person went about the tax credit

 

Just 3 more months to out of woods, but anything can happen in those 3 months.

 

I was told on a very clear terms in this forum, that if you are a salaried employee, then you are already paying the taxes to Federal. So if you have paid more than $4500 already to Federal on your taxes, then you will get a full refund of $4500. While the above video is saying something very different. So what am I missing here?

 

I just watched the video. I am not a tax expert, but I think the video is wrong in saying “if you are getting tax refund, then you cannot get tax credit”. I think there is a confusion in between money being withheld for income tax purpose and actual tax amount you are liable paying to IRS. You usually do not know how much tax liability you have until you finish 1040, although if your income and tax status don’t change much, you can estimate this amount from previous years tax returns. The amount of tax withheld may or may not be what you are liable to pay, that’s why you either have to pay owing amount (if your withholding was short) or get refund (if your withholding was over). As long as your tax liability is more than $4500 on the year you purchased Prime, regardless of your previous years refund or not, I think you can get full credit.

 

Yes, that is what I thought. This thread below, clearly shows that for a single person with zero dependent if line# 43 has a taxable income of around $33100, then you can claim full tax credit (assuming that you don't have other losses in stock market or any other deductible, which can reduce the line#43 below $33100.

Prime tax credit | Page 2 | PriusChat

 

WOW! EZ form must be easy!

Single, no dependents
Line 37: Adjusted Gross Income = 43,450
Line 40: Standard Deduction = 6,300
Line 42: Standard Exemption = 4,050
Line 43: Taxable Income = 33,100
Line 44: Tax = 4,505
Line 54: Other credits = 4,502
Line 63: Total Tax = 3

Married with children, having mortgage to pay, business to run, money to invest, etc, etc… the numbers get complicated.

 

Withholdings only impact the amount you either owe or get refunded (not counting penalties for insufficient withholding). Not your tax.
In the above case, If Salamander_King had $10000 withheld, he would be getting a $9997 refund. If he had zero withheld, he would owe $3 (plus likely some penalties for not withholding anything each quarter).

 

Once and for all, folks.

It's very simple.
Whatever the TOTAL AMOUNT you would owe the IRS for the entire year (including monies you've already paid the IRS by having your employer deduct some for federal tax each paycheck you get, as well as whatever you might either owe them on top of that, or get back in a refund if your employer took out too much) -- that TOTAL AMOUNT is your (federal) tax liability. If it's at least $4,502 then you'll get the whole $4,502 back -- either by not having to pay it (if you didn't contribute enough during the year from your paychecks) or by getting a refund (if you've already paid a bunch by having it deducted each month).

For example: say it's now April 2018 and your tax guy (or tax program) tells you:
-Your federal tax liability is $6000 (the total you need to pay the IRS for 2017 is $6000).
-You've already given the IRS $5000 (in deductions from your paycheck each month).
Then normally, you'd owe $1,000 more.

But with the Prime, you take the $6,000 total and minus the $4,502 Prime tax credit. So then the total you owe the IRS is $1498. But you've already paid the IRS $5000 over the course of the year -- so the IRS will give you a refund of $3502, because instead of owing the IRS $6,000 total, the Prime brought that down to owing the IRS $1498 total -- and since you already paid $5000 in deductions to the IRS during the year, you'll get a refund of $3502.

The only time you need to worry about not getting the full $4502 credit for the Prime, is if the TOTAL you owe the IRS is less than $4502. That's NOT $4502 "IN ADDITION" to whatever money you've already paid the IRS in withholding every paycheck, it's INCLUDING it.

Another way of putting it is this: it doesn't matter (when figuring out how much of the tax credit you'll get to keep) if you've paid the IRS a bunch of money already in withholding from your paychecks... or not one penny yet. All that matters is the TOTAL the IRS says you owe them for the entire year (including the monies you might have already given them by sending in estimated payments or deductions taken from your paychecks). If that total is at least $4502 then you get the entire $4502 federal credit for the Prime. If that total is only $3000 then you'll get $3000 of the Prime tax credit.

When you see people saying "you won't get a refund" what they mean is, if your TOTAL FEDERAL TAX LIABILITY is less than $4502, you'll only get up to what your total TAX LIABILITY is ($3000, $4000, whatever). But as long as your TOTAL FEDERAL TAX LIABILITY for the year (including monies you've already paid to the IRS) is at least $4502, then you'll get the full $4502 credit. If you haven't sent the IRS any money yet, it'll be $4502 less you have to send them. If you've been giving them money each paycheck, you may indeed get a refund now (unless you still owe the IRS a bunch more -- and what you owe them will now be $4502 less).