Why is my Residential Clean Energy Credit rolling over to next year?

[TGormley]

We are retired collecting social security but have a couple of small businesses I operate out of our home.  Last year in October, we installed $23,472 of solar panels on our home.  However, when we complete the Residential Clean Energy section under Deductions and Credits in Turbotax Deluxe, it says that our tax credit is $0 and $7,042 will roll over to 2026 taxes.  Why?  Shouldn't all of that be applicable this year?  The small businesses are a book author, Amazon Vine reviewer of products and AirBnB for 6 months of an apartment in our detached garage and are certainly less than 20% of our home.

[DoninGA]

Once your tax liability is 0, any remaining credits roll over to the next tax year.

[TGormley]

My "Federal Tax Due" is $421 so I still have a tax liability

[DoninGA]

@TGormley Sorry, I should have been more specific.  If the tax liability on your Form 1040 Line 24 is 0 then the credit is carried over to the next tax year.

What is the amount on the Form 1040 Line 24?

[TGormley]

Line 24 on my form 1040 is over $1400

[RobertB4444]

The more important question is really the amount on line 22.  You can't use the clean energy credit to remove self-employment tax.  Self-employment tax is just social security and medicare charged on the amounts you earned from the book author thing.  On the upside, it should have removed any tax from before that as well as carried into next year to deal with income tax then.