From the Director’s Desk: Seeking Senate Support for Tax Credit, Greenbrier Anticipation, February EIA Data Released Yesterday?
Seeking Senate Support for Pellet Appliance Tax Credit
President Trump has been urging the House and Senate to deliver his “Big, Beautiful Bill” to his desk, and the version that came out of the House eliminated all of the tax credits in the 25c program, including the tax credit for qualifying wood pellet appliances. Seeing the tax credit end up on the cutting room floor was a blow for the broader wood heat community, the PFI included, as the effort to gain that tax credit reaches back over a decade.
Looking back on our fly-in, members of Congress were noncommittal on their support of the tax credit. Seasoned fly-in attendees know that elected policymakers are reluctant to come down definitively on specific policy positions, particularly if they know their position will not be appreciated by those sitting around their office.
Our tax credit was nestled within the Energy Efficient Home Improvement credit, which extended tax credits to a wide variety of home improvement technologies, including insulation, doors, central air conditioners, new hot water heaters, and heat pumps. In the 2023 tax year, 3.6 million Americans claimed a tax credit for one of those technologies. Credits for “biomass stoves and boilers” were claimed by 48,180 taxpayers—or less than 1% of the total Energy Efficient Home Improvement credit. The biggest driver of the Energy Efficient Home Improvement credit was new insulation (699,440 credits generated) and exterior windows and skylights (694,450 credits generated). If there’s been outrage from the insulation and window folks, we haven’t heard it.
Our effort now moves on to the Senate relationships we’ve been building, but we are facing a 75-foot putt with at least two breaks as we work to preserve this credit. Mainstream coverage of this bill suggests that some GOP Senators don’t feel like federal spending has been slashed enough. That doesn’t bode well for our tax credit, nestled in with other tax credits that cost federal coffers over $40 billion in 2023.
That said—and we certainly made this clear during our fly-in—the tax credit directly supports the President’s vision for increased timber production that he outlined in an executive order in the first months of his presidency.
