topic Solar electric costs: The TT question assumes my wife and I both own a home. I own, she rents, but we did live separate. Can TT unbreak this? in Get your taxes done using TurboTax

Solar electric costs: The TT question assumes my wife and I both own a home. I own, she rents, but we did live separate. Can TT unbreak this?

leslie-mc2-consu — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:26:48 GMT

if I answer "No, we lived in separate homes", which is what happened, it stops the wizard stating TT doesnt support it. Note that the tax code allows for this, TT is not handling this correctly.

Re: Solar electric costs: The TT question assumes my wife and I both own a home. I own, she rents...

PattiF — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 02:27:57 GMT

The IRS instructions for Form 5695 specify that both you and your spouse owned and lived apart in separate main homes.

"Married taxpayers with more than one home.

If both you and your spouse owned and lived apart in separate main homes, the limit on the amount of the credit applies to each of you separately. If you are filing separate returns, both of you would complete a separate Form 5695. If you are filing a joint return, figure your energy efficient home improvement credit as follows."

The instructions seem to indicate that both homes need to be owned.

Re: Solar electric costs: The TT question assumes my wife and I both own a home. I own, she rents...

Jon75 — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 03:12:57 GMT

I agree with the tax verbiage. The problem is the Turbotax wizard logic. You see only one of us own our home and lives in it, I still qualify for the credit according to the actual form.

However, Turbotax doesn't display further questions when it assumes that both of us must own a separate main home, which simply isnt the case to meet the requirements.

if we filed married separate then I am guessing we each would have the opportunity to submit separate forms for our main home because the wizard runs for each account.

This means that Turbotax is simply missing a question in the wizard: "Do person x and person y own their own home?" with Yes/No buttons - or possibly a toggle on/off for each person that owns a home. It would then read from the previous entered forms to confirm that a 1098 exists, if not, it creates a "Review" object related to that home (because you cant install solar panels without a house existing).

As it stands im sure I can attach a 5695 to our filing, Im guessing this wont get resolved this season, but can prevent questions in the future.