From IRS Instruction for Form 5695:
Joint occupancy.
If you occupied your home jointly with someone, each occupant must complete their own Form 5695. To figure the credit, the maximum qualifying costs that can be taken into account by all occupants for qualified fuel cell property costs is $1,667 for each one-half kilowatt of capacity of the property. The amount allocable to you for qualified fuel cell property costs is the lesser of:
The amount you paid, or
The maximum qualifying cost of the property multiplied by a fraction. The numerator is the amount you paid and the denominator is the total amount paid by you and all other occupants.
These rules don't apply to married individuals filing a joint return.
Example.
Ava owns a house with Bruce where they both reside. In 2024, they installed qualified fuel cell property at a cost of $20,000 with a kilowatt capacity of 5. Ava paid $12,000 towards the cost of the property and Bruce paid the remaining $8,000. The amount to be allocated is $16,670 ($1,667 x 10 (kilowatt capacity x 2)). The amount of cost allocable to Ava is $10,002 ($16,670 x $12,000/$20,000). The amount of cost allocable to Bruce is $6,668 ($16,670 x $8,000/$20,000).
If you have Form 5695 and claiming joint occupancy, the IRS will not be accepting these returns until 3/16/25. You can see this on this IRS site. The language you see below is from Row 39 of the Tax Year 2024 spreadsheet.
Taxpayers claiming Joint Occupancy on Form 5695 will have to file via paper if filing their return before the Form 5695 schema is updated in mid-March. This temporary limitation should only impact a subsection of Form 5695 filers. For a preview of the TY24 draft form and instructions for Form 5695, please see the Draft tax forms on IRS.gov at https://www.irs.gov/draft-tax-forms. Submission of Forms 5695 that do not claim Joint Occupancy may be e-filed at the start of Processing Year 2025
does joint ccupancy mean husband and wife filing joint return? or if the property has a non spouse joint owner?
If you have Form 5695 and claiming joint occupancy, the IRS will not be accepting these returns until 3/16/25. You can see this on this IRS site. The language you see below is from Row 39 of the Tax Year 2024 spreadsheet.
Taxpayers claiming Joint Occupancy on Form 5695 will have to file via paper if filing their return before the Form 5695 schema is updated in mid-March. This temporary limitation should only impact a subsection of Form 5695 filers. For a preview of the TY24 draft form and instructions for Form 5695, please see the Draft tax forms on IRS.gov at https://www.irs.gov/draft-tax-forms. Submission of Forms 5695 that do not claim Joint Occupancy may be e-filed at the start of Processing Year 2025
I am married filing jointly so why am I getting this error?
If you're using TurboTax Online, close the program, clear your Cache and Cookies and step through the interview for the Energy Credit again.
There's a screen near the beginning asking if you 'lived together in the same house'. Say NO here and this will uncheck the box on Form 5695 for Joint Occupancy (it's not applicable for Married Filing Jointly).
Then try Efiling again, and let us know if this doesn't resolve your issue.
In TurboTax Desktop, go to Forms at the upper right, then 'Open Form' and type in '5695' in the pop-up window. Click on the form.
Look at the checkbox at the top of the form when it is displayed, if checked, uncheck it.
It doesn't. If I click that we lived separately it says they can't calculate a credit for married couples living in separate main houses so I can't take the credit.
In the interview, DON'T say you live in separate houses.
TurboTax may be incorrectly checking the box on form 5695, even when you indicate that you lived in the same home. You have to manually uncheck it directly on the form.
I'm running into same issue. My taxes were rejected on Feb 15, 2025 e-filing due to to same Joint Occupancy message for Form 5695. TurboTax never flagged the issue prior to submission, and a rejection text was received for Federal Taxes filed. Message in Check E-file Status tab states that rejected taxes can be "reviewed for errors" and re-filed electronically on or after March 17, 2025. In my case, I am filing separately in a joint-owned home for credits related to exterior doors, windows, and insulation... all of which I paid for.
How does this issue/delay impact users when initial submission was made, but the deadline for free e-file from TurboTax is Feb 18, 2025?
You will be able to resubmit. You have filed by the free file date, at this point you are just correcting a reject.
In TurboTax Online, close the program, clear your Cache and Cookies, then return to Home Energy Credits in the Deductions & Credits section. Click the down arrow to the right of Your Home to display all the topics.
If you're Married Filing Jointly, indicate that you 'lived together in the same home'.
So I’m filing single and my taxes were rejected related to Joint Occupancy on form 5695. I didn’t select joint occupancy, I guess it is a Turbo Tax error. It says I can’t fix until March 17. When I look at my completed form 5695 I see that the box at the bottom has an “X” on line 32a it says (if the special rule for joint occupants applies, check here and the box has an “X” in it,) so to fix this on March 17 is the only thing I need to do is remove the “X”?
Look at the top of your Form 5695 to see if the first box is checked. If you're using TurboTax Desktop and can open Form 5695, uncheck that box if you're filing as Single, as well as the box you indicate in your screenshot, if it's still checked.
If you're using TurboTax Online, close the program, clear your Cache and Cookies, and return to the Home Energy Credit section. After indicating that you made energy improvements, you'll see a question asking about 'living arrangements'. Make sure you didn't indicate you shared the home with anyone else.
This may resolve your issue and allow you to Efile without error. If not, you'll have to wait until the IRS resolves this issue.
@Laurakayrn
I tried to clear cache and cookies and log back in and I still have same error of the joint occupancy on 5695. My husband and I are married and filing jointly. Is there a way to get it to efile? We already have missed the end of Feb price discount due to no fault of ours due to this. How can we fix it or are we sol until mid month when things are fixed?
The IRS website now lists this as not being resolved until 3/23/2025
This return can't currently be processed for e-filing due to Joint Occupancy on Form 5695. This is due to a processing error that will be corrected on March 27, 2025. On or after March 27, 2025 open the rejected return, review it for errors, and resubmit the return for electronic filing. If you don't want to wait until March 17, you may print the return and file it by mail.
Known issues and solutions | Internal Revenue Service
How do you manually uncheck this directly on the form if you are using the web version of TurboTax.
Hi thanks for this information...after reading this Im going to check if the form 5695 is active and update for use it says 3/17/2025 I have a customer with a error reject code 5695 joint occupancy in this thread of info I have to find out if the error is do to the form not being update (but person said spouse has already filed) I was think its rejected because spouse did not listed form 5695 on their taxes return and that is why spouse is being rejected : customer sent this reply when I ask about joint occupancy:
no because she didn't put anything about the energy credit on hers
we only claimed it on mine
Have I have further question this will help us resolve the matter thanks for provided information to help resolve tax question. Did you'll occupy your home jointly
we both live in the same house that we both own
it still comes back an error, with it unchecked on the top. As far as for question 32, X marked in black, you cannot uncheck
Hi,
It does not indicated that the joint occupancy refers only to husband and wife it states joint occupancy:
Joint occupancy. If you occupied your home jointly with someone, each occupant must complete their own Form 5695
Just wanted to say thank you to this thread and the Tax Experts advice.
I did want to pass along that we use desktop version of TT Premier.
Married filing jointly.
Original Fed & State return submission rejected.
I did try just unchecking the joint occupancy box directly on the 5695 form in Forms Mode.
Re-submitted and Fed + 2 States ALL rejected again.
Went into TT again and deleted the 5695 worksheet that TT also automatically created during the step-by-step process.
Resubmitted and ALL Fed & State returns were accepted. So glad I didn't have to wait for any TT update of their template. Form 5695 actually has a note near the top that if your joint return is your spouse do not check that Joint Occupancy box. Our tax situation does not have any splitting of 5695 credits.
Again appreciated the thread and maybe this helps with some frustration of others like me:-)