Should alternative vehicle refueling property credit be 0, if I DO have a tax liability, and my AMT is 0 (cuz tentative is less than real taxes paid)? Not working for me.

[hengbokdl7]

It should be 30% of my costs applied as a credit.  But it keeps coming up as 0, even though my AMT is 0, and I DO have tax liability, meaning I owe taxes to the government, and I overpaid throughout the year and have a refund coming, but there IS a liability.  Why is my refueling property credit coming up as 0?

[ThomasM125]

Your credit may be coming up as zero because your tentative minimum tax is equal to your net regular tax. In that case, you would not have an alternative minimum tax (AMT) but you would still be denied the refueling property credit. Also, just because you owe money does not mean you have an income tax, as there may be other taxes such as self-employment taxes that the credit does not apply to. 

You can look on your form 1040, line 16 to see if you have an income tax to apply the credit to. Also,  you can look on Form 8911 Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit to see how your refueling credit is being handled. If you are using the online version of TurboTax, you can see Form 8911 once you pay for the program.

To see your form 1040 while working on your program using the online version of TurboTax, follow these steps:

1. Click on Tax Tools in the left menu bar
2. Click on Tools
3. Look under Other Helpful links….
4. Choose View Tax Summary
5. Look in the left menu bar and choose Preview my 1040

You can use this link to see how form 8911 works:  Refueling credit

[SteamTrain]

Also, check line 18 of your form 1040.

That credit gets used against the tax assessed value on line 18, and line 18 may already be a zero.....and if you are Self-Employed, the SE tax liability gets added on later.

[hengbokdl7]

Thank you for the help thus far.

So, my line 16 and 18 of my 1040 are the same, and are positive values.  So there is a liability to credit for this.  And for some reason, there is no 8911 form in the tax return preview (maybe because it's coming up as 0)?  Is there any way to have the 8911 form show up in my tax return even though it's zero so that I can see how or why it's calculating down to zero?

[MichaelG81]

Yes, you would need Form 8911. According to Forms Availability, it is not available until 2/2/2023. So, it may not be adding correctly right now due to an unavailable form. 

@hengbokdl7

[SteamTrain]

The simple preview will not directly show if the form 8911 is there or not.....you have to pay for the software and download a full copy of yoru tax return.

The only other thing I can think of is that the form 8911 is not supposed to be ready until After 2 February, and perhaps some lines are still using prior year form calculations, or don't calculate correctly until the form is finalized in the software.