Shelter - June/July/August 2009

Volume 48, Issue 4 - June/July/August 2009

From the Editor
THE ISSUE AT HAND

A Look at the Tax Credit

Shelter has covered the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AARA) tax credit and how it applies to windows and window replacement projects extensively in our online newsletter and website.

After a recent chat with Tara Taffera, editor/publisher of Shelter’s sister publication, DWM, and our publisher Brian Welsh on the subject of tax credits and educating distributors and dealers and their customers on the subject, I decided to call on local remodelers to bid on replacing my 15-year-old aluminum windows.

Trust me, we desperately need to replace our windows and are losing a ton of energy through them. But my family doesn’t have a cool $10,000 in the bank ready for a remodeling project; my husband and I honestly needed some idea of how much we need to start saving for this project.

This isn’t the first time we have replaced windows in a home. We replaced our then 13-year-old windows in our house in Memphis, Tenn., four years ago, after we noticed they were rotting. After completion, we were able to deduct some of the cost from our taxes at the end of the year.

We are hoping to do the same with the AARA tax credit. But I’m sorry to say that the tax credit information and how it applies to windows doesn’t seem to be making its way down the supply chain to remodelers and contractors. Read some of the statements made in my secret shopper on page 8, and you’ll see contractors and remodelers are not well-versed regarding the specifics of the credit. They need your help. I think distributors and dealers, and even manufacturers, are under the gun to show their value right now. You can show yours by finding out which products you distribute fit the new tax credit, and get that information to your customers and even to their customers.

One contractor with whom I talked claimed that all his vendor’s windows applied, but a statement like that makes me nervous. I want to know that they DO apply for sure. As for the other contractors, one brought me the tax information with his bid, and the other didn't.

Look for more on the tax credits in the September-October issue of Shelter magazine. There will be an in-depth article on how well manufacturers are communicating about the tax credit with their customers and more. You should also check out DWM’s, site at www.dwmmag.com/e-green to get the latest door and window manufacturers whose products apply to the tax credits.

P.S. If you would like to know more about how Shelter can help make getting tax information to your customers easier for you, e-mail me at scarpenter@sheltermagazine.com or contact publisher Brian Welsh at 215/679-8826 or bwelsh@sheltermagazine.com.

--Samantha