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Hybrid Vehicles Honda Civic Hybrid Honda Civic Hybrid
1765 messages, Last post on May 28, 2009 at 1:36 PM
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Federal Income Tax Deduction for the Honda Insight and Other Hybrids
From: http://home.nycap.rr.com/hondataxinsight/News%20Article.html
See IRS Publication 535, Business Expenses, for the year 2000. (This publication refers to Title 26, Section 179A of the Internal Revenue Code, "Deduction for clean-fuel vehicles and certain refueling property," which is the law that applies.)
The upshot is this: Hybrid owners are eligible for a federal income tax deduction up to $2,000 in the year of purchase equal to the total cost of the parts of the vehicle involved in storing, delivering, and "burning" electricity. Since the cost of replacing the battery pack alone for my 2000 Insight would be close to $2,000, undoubtedly the maximum deduction applies.
American Honda currently is involved in getting the IRS to make an official ruling on what qualifies and what the dollar figure should be.
You may want to see:
Publication 463 Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses 544 Sales and Other Dispositions of Assets 946 How To Depreciate Property
Form (and Instructions) 8834 Qualified Electric Vehicle Credit See chapter 14 for information about getting publications and forms.
Deduction for nonbusiness clean-fuel vehicle property by individuals. Individuals can claim the deduction for clean-fuel vehicle property used for nonbusiness purposes by including the deduction in the total on line 32 of Form 1040. Also, enter the amount of your deduction and "Clean-Fuel" on the dotted line next to line 32.
State Credit Toyota tells customers to claim a $1,200 credit on the Prius in New York. |
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| That's a great idea. I wish they would do that up here. I think the government should credit all of these cars and really promote gas efficient cars. Maybe we can start slowly cutting reliance on the middle east that way. | |
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Here is the link: http://www.taxplanet.com/taxnews/energy042502/energy042502.html According to my interpretation of the cryptic text of this bill, it looks like this year Hybrid Civic owners should get about $500 basic "hybrid" tax credit (based on the ratio of power for the electric motor to the gas engine in the Hybrid Civic) and about $1000 tax credit for fuel efficiency if this bill gets signed into law. I hope the IRS will issue specific guidelines about how much tax credit will be applicable to different model and makes of hybrid vehicles. Disclaimer: I am not a CPA or tax attorney, and this bill is not even yet signed into law, so do your homework before you plan or claim your tax deductions. |
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Hi everyone. I just signed in at the townhall and reading some of the discussions is very informative and helpful. Anyway, This is my first time to buy a new car and my fiancee and I are having an endless debate on whether to buy the Honda civic Ex or the Honda civic Hybrid. So we need to come up with a decision now and we need all your help and insights about which one to choose. We're worried though, that we can't get a good deal with the Hybrid since it just came out and not always in stock. Looking forward for any information you can give. Thanks so much |
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| There are a couple of threads in the "News & Views" section of TH that have discussed the merits of hybrids vs conventional vehicles. The short answer that the hybrid has a cost premium that is greater than can be recovered by fuel savings in the life of the vehicle (at current prices) and it has significantly less power than the conventional Civic, particularly the EX. There is also the issue of battery replacement at unknown time and cost, probably around 100Kmi and perhaps $1.5-2K in today's dollars. If you typically drive in mountainous terrain, or other conditions that frequently deplete the battery, life will be shortened. | |
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I think it is great that there is a rebate for buying the Civic Hybrid. Unfortunately we will soon see hybrid SUV's that get the same rebate. They will still use twice as much gas as the Civic. To me it makes sense to reward the results of technology, not the technology itself. Give the rebates to cars that get good mileage, and don't give it to vehicles that still guzzle gas even with the hybrid technology. |
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Good point, The way the proposed tax credit bill is written, the fuel efficiency part of the tax credit is proportional to how much better fuel efficiency (mpg) a hybrid vehicle gets compared to the current average fuel efficiency of vehicles in the same weight class. This is not too bad as it provides an incentive for auto makers to improve fuel efficiency. It would be much better if there was a second component to the fuel efficiency tax credit that was proportional to the absolute fuel efficiency, but this could be tricky since then auto makers could get away with making lighter and lighter cars to qualify for this credit instead of improving the fuel efficiency of their engines. Overall, I don't have a problem with how the fuel efficiency part of the hybrid tax credit is worded in the proposed bill, but it would be much better if they improved the wording for the part of the tax credit that is proportional to the ratio of electric/gas power provided by the engine. I guess the idea was to eliminate the possibility of car makers putting in a wimpy electric motor just to qualify the vehicle as "hybrid". |
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Here is the link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020515/ap_wo_en_fe/fea_us_hybrid_cars_1 |
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Gas mileage: We've had our Civic Hybrid about one month now. Overall we are getting about 47 to 48 mpg, but keep in mind I commute 25 miles a day over some pretty long, steep hills on the freeway. One weekend, we did a 300-mile country drive -- mostly rolling hills, no big climbs. For 300 miles our average was 50.3 mpg. We were VERY pleased. One thing -- this car is not made for super-long steep climbs. Driving up the Grapevine on I-5 driving down to Los Angeles, the IMA (battery) runs out so with just the gas engine, we have to drive slow in the right-side lanes. Otherwise, this car is awesome and we love it totally. As for car prices -- I queried roughly four DOZEN dealers in SF Bay Area (I threw a pretty wide net -- all the way up to Sonoma/Napa, east to Tracy, south to Bakersfield) and Los Angeles area combined. A small handful were "guaranteeing" MSRP but they didn't have the cars in stock (when the price is guaranteed for seven days but the car isn't due in for 14 days, what happens to the sticker price?). My experience is, TALK TO THE SALESMAN. If you show that you are serious, he will lower the price for you. Our dealer was asking for $5000 OVER sticker, and we talked them down to only $1200 over sticker. Keep shopping, and show them you are willing to walk if they don't lower their price to something reasonable. |
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By the way, we are going on a road trip vacation next week -- from the SF Bay Area down to LA, then to Vegas, then Phoenix. I will report back on how our car did mileage/performance wise. Hey you SF Civic Hybrid owners (well, East Bay)! I keep my eyes peeled but I haven't seen any of you yet! I look for the new Civic back-end WITH the front mast antenna (which I think only Ford Focus and Prius seem to have right now). I'll keep looking! 
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