Like your first cup of coffee in the morning. As Kos and others have said, elections have consequences. Tucked into the stimulus bill are increased tax credits for doing various things to fix your house, like installing better doors and windows, replacing your craptastic water heater, or upgrading your HVAC system. For most of this, you can take a credit for 30% of the cost up to $1500 for anything on the list you had done in 2009.
Did the Republicans come up with any of these nifty ideas? Hell motherfarking no! All they wanted to do is regular plain-vanilla tax cuts. That's a helluva way to stimulate the economy. Our way is better. Here is the list of eligible home-improvement projects from energystar.gov.
The skinny on how this affects homeowners:
On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed a stimulus bill (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) that made some significant changes to the energy efficiency tax credits. The highlights are:
* The tax credits that were previously effective for 2009, have been extended to 2010 as well.
* The tax credit has been raised from 10% to 30%.
* The tax credits that were for a specific dollar amount (ex $300 for a CAC), have been converted to 30% of the cost.
* The maximum credit has been raised from $500 to $1500 for the two years (2009–2010). However, some improvements such as geothermal heat pumps, solar water heaters, and solar panels are not subject to the $1,500 maximum.
* The $200 cap on windows has been removed.
Ooh, yeah baby. Gimme some of that.
For the benefit of this diary not being really, really short, here is a somewhat condensed list of the stuff you can do:
Windows and/or doors
Roofing
Insulation
HVAC
Geothermal heat pump
Biomass stove (I wish I had waited)
Solar panels/water heaters
Wind turbines
Fuel cells (residential)
Certain kinds of hybrid cars
Get the full details from energystar.gov. I'm sure there are a few of these you were meaning to do anyway; well, this is your year.