- Buyers across the United States are having tax returns rejected due to paperwork errors.
- Although the cars are eligible for rebates, dealers made mistakes on the paperwork.
- It’s unclear how many buyers are out of their tax rebate, but the IRS could offer a solution.
Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids promise savings on energy costs—and sometimes at the dealership, too. But while federal incentives have helped push adoption, they’re not guaranteed to last forever and might disappear soon. In 2024, many buyers factored these rebates into their purchase decisions, only to find out later that dealership paperwork mistakes left them empty-handed.
It seems as if every year, taxes regarding EVs change to one degree or another. That was certainly the case in 2024 too. Perhaps the biggest change is that buyers could get access to their rebate at the time of purchase. For this to work though, dealers had to enroll in the program and then use a specific portal to report when buyers took advantage of their rebate at the time of sale.
Read: California To Reinstate EV Rebates If Trump Scraps Tax Credit, Just Not For Tesla
According to NPR, however, thousands of dealers failed to meet those guidelines. Those who didn’t enroll still needed to provide buyers with paperwork to obtain their tax rebate at the end of the year. In many cases, the form provided was out of date and, therefore, meaningless.
Kristina Meier, who bought a PHEV minivan last September, says that her dealer provided forms that worked in 2023 but not in 2024. Without the dealer properly submitting the paperwork on time, customers aren’t eligible for the tax rebate, even if they did everything else by the book.
A Slim Chance for a Fix
The deadline for a dealer to submit paperwork to the IRS is just three days after the sale, which means it’s currently impossible for Meier and others like her to claim their tax rebate. However, there’s still a glimmer of hope: the IRS has allowed retroactive submissions in the past.
If the agency does so again, it would allow buyers like Meier to get their tax rebate despite the dealer screwing up on the front end. Whether or not that will happen, however, remains unknown. For now, it’s unclear how many buyers are affected by this issue, but the more people speak up, the better chance there is the IRS might to do something about it.
