Electrical Golf Cart -- Tax credit ??????

John & Angela wrote:
Funny story. When we bought our club car in 2003 that was one of the selling points of the cart. It has signals, seat belts, highway tires, 4 wheel brakes, goes 24 MPH. Had to brake it to him that we were Canadian and it didn't do us any good. Bought it anyway, brand new 4900 bucks. Still runs great. Funny thing was he had just bought a Hummer that gave him a 100,000 dollar tax credit. That one surprised me but apparently was quite common during the Bush era tax credits. Who would have thought that someone that can afford a hummer getting 14 mpg needed a 100,000 dollar tax credit. I'm looking at this through the eyes of a foreigner. I am sure there was more to it. I just never looked into it.

Have you looked into the small portable carts that can be carried on the back of the hitch?

Good luck with your search.

That was the opposite end of the golf cart type incentive. The incentive at the time was for trucks over a certain GVWR. The thought and intent was to get businesses to buy more capital equipment, and big trucks are certainly capital equipment. The capital equipment purchases fuel business expansion and since almost all large trucks are domestically produced, the credit benefited the US automakers and their employees and unions. The Hummer and some other large personal vehicles fell into the tax credit. Again, if favorable tax treatment is offered, why not take advantage? Also, it was never a tax credit, it was an allowable depreciable expense. (Note that the current tax law limits the value of business automobiles to an artificially low amount around $28K for a car and $31K for a van or pickup. As anyone who has bought either lately, that doesn't cover the cost of a whole lot of makes and models.) Favorable tax treatments very often have ancillary benefits beyond the person who actually gets that treatment.